From COMEX5 in Krakow

I'm at a conference in Krakow, Poland.  The conference is called COMEX5.  My other half said it sounded like a comic convention.  It's not, but it does indeed share a name with a convention which took place in Singapore a couple of weeks ago.

The COMEX title is an abbreviation of "Collective Motion in Exotic Nuclei."  Despite this being the series's fifth outing, it is really quite a venerable conference series, it being a re-branding of the Giant Resonance conference.  Giant resonances are the main topic of the conference.  They are vibrational states which are very collective in nature, meaning that they feature the action of all nucleons in the nucleus.  Their observation dates back to the mid 1930s when at least the first hint was seen (by Bothe and Gentner in Heidelberg).

I'm giving a talk here on Thursday about using time-dependent methods to describe these resonances, and what is shows about the underlying structure of the nuclei.  I also, of course, take part in the organised events during the conference, such as the reception in Krakow's beautiful Collegium Maius, as pictured.

Suggestions from PRL

Last month, I commented about the high proportion of articles in the nuclear physics section of Physical Review Letters that are in the sub-field of relativistic heavy ion collisions (RHIC) and how they form the preponderance of articles promoted by the editors to appear on the journal front page.   In the last month, the trend has continued, and only RHIC papers have been highlighted.  So, let me highlight here a paper which was published last month, and has been picked up by a few news websites:

The paper is called "Direct measurement of the mass difference of ¹⁶³Ho and ¹⁶³Dy solves the Q-value puzzle for the neutrino mass determination."  The physics motivation behind the work is that the nuclear reaction:

¹⁶³Ho + e^– → ¹⁶³Dy + ν_e

can be used as a model-independnt (i.e. not relying on assumptions about the structure of the nucleus that may not be correct) mans of determining the mass of the electron neutrino -- something that is not pinned-down at all well.  The mass of the neutrino is known to be extremely small, but not zero.  By observing the above reaction, and using conservation of energy, one can work out the energy balance (the "Q-value" of the title) from the observed particles, and deduce the energy carried off by the (unobserved) neutrino, and hence its mass.  To be able to do this, the masses of the two nuclear isotopes in the equation: Holmium–163 and Dysprosium–163 must be known to very high accuracy.  Actually -- it is only the difference between the two masses that needs to be known, and there is disagreement in the published data what this difference is, to a level that swamps the tiny neutrino mass.

The experimenters here used a Penning trap to store ions of each of the isotopes.  For a given particle of mass m and charge q moving in a trap with magnetic field B, the particle will move in a circle with frequency f=qB/(2πm).  Measuring the frequency allows a value of the mass to be determined.  They put the two different ions in the same trap at the same time, but in separate bunches, reducing systematic effects to do with e.g. variations in the magnetic field.  They concluded that their value for the mass difference is at variance with the "accepted" value (that published in the Atomic Mass Evalution) by more than 7 times the size of their error bar.  Thus, the error in determining the neutrino mass should be able to be reduced in future experiments looking at the reaction above.

Anti-migration sentiment in Guildford

There has been much in the news recently giving a reminder that many other people in the world find themselves in a wretched situation and are in terrible danger.  Like other humans since the dawn of our species, they wish to wander or migrate to where they hope to find a better life.  

Here in the UK, immigration was more or less unrestricted in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th up to the First World War.  These days, restricting immigration seems to be a major policy of the main political parties.  Belatedly, our government has agreed a somewhat mealy-mouthed acceptance that Britain can play a part in giving some of our displaced and frightened fellow humans a more stable life.  It's a start.  I have signed the petition calling on the government to accept more asylum seekers and refugee migrants in the UK.  It's been a particularly successful petition on the government's official petition web site, having attracted 400,000 signatures thus far.  100,000 are needed to force a debate on the matter in parliament, and perhaps it was part of the reason that the government acted.  

I note, though, that on the government petition website, at the time of writing, a reactionary petition to cease all immigration into the UK is currently accumulating signatures at a higher rate, as the picture below shows.

This brings me to the more on-topic part of my post.  On-topic, in the sense that this blog is purportedly about nuclear physics and life in academia in the UK.

While walking along a footpath in Guildford a couple of days ago, I spotted a sign, shown below, saying "A no students zone":

Someone had gone to the effort of making a bunch of these, and sticking them on lampposts around town.  Now, I can't speak for the person who did this (but if they chance to find this blog post, I'd welcome them to post and give their view) but one doesn't have to go too far to find people who don't want students to come and live in the same town as them.  This is another migration issue, though one that includes national, as opposed to solely international, migration, and one in which the migrants are typically not in the most distressing circumstances.  

I'm not sure of the whole gamut of reasons why residents are against this particular kind of migration, but an opinion piece in a local web site suggests that the pressure on housing is one reason.  A local political party which won council seats (more seats than Labour) wants the students segregated, though how they propose to deny citizens access to the private rental sector is not something I've found on their website.  I can certainly understand anyone's frustration that it is hard to afford somewhere to live in Guildford, but blaming migrants is never the right answer.  It may appear the proximate cause of one's woes, but blaming the person who happened to arrive in the area later than you or your ancestors did is not conducive to any kind of reasonable solution.

I should perhaps disclose that I wasn't born in Guildford, but now live here.  I always thought that was an acceptable thing to do, though I did move from the place of my birth as a 5 year old.

To end on a positive note for the burghers of Guildford;  The government petition website lets you see what the local breakdown of popular petitions is.  I showed above how the petition to stop immigrants coming to the UK is currently getting more signatures then the one supporting the settling of refugees.  In Guildford, the one to accept migrants is top of the list and the one to stop them features nowhere on it.  Second on the list from Guildford is to debate a vote of no confidence on Health Secretary, and Surrey MP, Jeremy Hunt.  I guess that's a doubly-positive note to end with.

September in Preview

Who let it be September, already?  

Actually, it's seemed rather Septemberal for a while.  Yesterday was the late August bank holiday, and it never seemed to get very bright here in Guildford, with the sky overcast all day, and drizzle falling for much of it.  The picture attached to this post is from my holiday last week, showing a typical scene (though it had stopped raining for the picture itself).

September means back-to-school time, but only kids -- at my University, at least, the students don't come back until 5th October, with new starters coming for the week leading up to that date.   Freshers' week is usually a busy time for me.  At least, it has been over the last several years, as I've been a Warden on campus.  This means I live on campus, in the student accommodation blocks, and act as a kind of hybrid between a policeman, a headmaster, and a social worker.  It's been an interesting job.  Sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not so much, but doing a second job for seven years and having free accommodation have enabled me to buy a place to live in Guildford, which is no mean feat.  So -- September means moving house for me.  I remember from previous occasions of doing it that moving house is not a particularly pleasurable experience... but it will be nice to be in a home of my own.  

Shortly after moving, I'm going to conference #2 of the summer.  It's called COMEX5, which abbreviation stands for Collective Motion in Exotic Nuclei Under Extreme Conditions.  I'm looking forward to that.  It's in Krakow, Poland, which is a nice place to spend a week, and I'm sure to get a bunch of interesting ideas from the talks (excepting my own).  After I get back, there'll be a final week of undergraduates not being here, followed by the arrival of the new students.  Exciting!  It looks like we've got another bumper year in terms of student intake, and that ~120 is our new norm