Student placement in Beijing

Marko, at the entrance to the nuclear physics building

I'm heading home from my last trip of the season to visit students on their MPhys Research Year placement.  This time it's been to Beijing where we have a student, Marko, working on some calculations of nuclear fission.  He is being hosted by Peking University, working in the group of Junchen Pei.  Usually on these trips, I am visiting a student working in an area not exactly the same as my own.  In this case, Marko, together with Pei, is building on some work that I did with a PhD student a few years ago, and it's exciting for me to see this work being continued.  

I now have a relatively quiet summer (travel-wise, at least).  According to the rules for the MPhys Research Year, our students get visited twice by a member of academic staff, and I will make a second round of trips in September.

Visiting students in Canberra

This year, we (University of Surrey Physics Department) have sent two of our undergraduate masters students out to the Australian National University in Canberra for a paid work placement in the nuclear physics department.  In the last few days I've been visiting them to find out what they've been up to, to check on progress, conduct an assessment and to make sure everything is generally okay.

The two students are working on reaction mechanisms, trying to understand the process of fusion better, particularly as fusion processes compete with reaction mechanism that lead to the combined nucleus, formed when two nuclei react, not sticking together.  This is especially important in understanding the reactions that lead to making new superheavy elements, where the competing processes dominate.

I'm happy to report that the students are enjoying life in Canberra and at ANU in particular, and I've enjoyed learning about the work they are doing.  I should be back for a second visit in September, which will coincide with a workshop taking place here (HIAS 2019).

Last night, as part of the visit, I took the students and two of the supervisory team out to dinner.   From left to right in the picture we are Prof Mahananda Dasgupta, Dr Ed Simpson, Stefan Parker-Steele, Wiktoria Wojtaczka, and me, Dr Paul Stevenson.

Visiting a student at RIKEN

Part of my trip to Japan involves visiting a Surrey undergraduate MPhys student who is on his Research Year placement at the Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at RIKEN, just outside Tokyo.   

The student, Richard, is working on the Rare-RI Ring^{[link to open access paper on the apparatus]}, a storage ring in which very unstable neutron-rich isotopes are injected, following their creation at the production target.  Here, by measuring their cyclotron frequency, their masses can be deduced.  Ultimately, good knowledge of these masses is important to understand the r-process of nucleosynthesis which takes place in (probably) colliding neutron stars and certain kinds of supernova.  Richard's task it to work on a replacement for one of the detectors which detects the precise location of the ion beam for one which perturbs the flight of the particle less as it makes the measurement, and hence increases the accuracy.

Here in the picture is Richard standing by the detector, where he is currently spending his days making measurements to characterise how it is working.

As well as his work, Richard has been enjoying getting to know Tokyo at the weekends.

Big in Japan

Following a trip to see a student on placement at the University of Massachusetts last week, I'm now in Japan seeing another one (see photo), who is based at the RIBF (Radioactive Ion Beam Facility) in RIKEN, just outside Tokyo.  Lily is working on a new storage ring which will be used for precision mass measurements of exotic isotopes that will hopefully shed light on the r–process which takes place in stellar explosions and is responsible for creating heavy nuclei that we find on Earth today.  The intermediary nuclei in these nuclear reactions are very neutron rich and unstable, and the ones created in the stellar environments decayed very shortly after their creation.  The facility at RIKEN is currently unique in the world in its ability to create such neutron-rich isotopes

I had a guided tour of the lab this morning by Lily and her supervisor.  It's a lot cleaner and shinier than most other labs I have been to (with the possible exception of the NIF in the US), but I have been assured that it was just because the bits I was seeing were so new, and not quite in operation yet.  The storage ring will be tested and ready for use during the year, so it should be a good year to be here on placement.  Ironically, this nuclear physics lab cannot run for as much of the year as it used to due to the increase in electricity costs following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the damage at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.  Japan has shut down all its other nuclear reactors, which used to provide around 30% of the country's electricity.  

U Mass

I'm at UMass Lowell for a few days this week, mainly to visit one of our MPhys students who is on placement here for his Research Year.  I had Sunday to myself, and contemplated doing tourist things in Boston, but decided in the end to see what Lowell had to offer.  It's an old mill town, and there is lots of related heritage.  I wandered round the town, and it was a lovely day.  The first warm day of the year so far, apparently.  I went to Kerouac Square, in honour of Jack Kerouac who was born in the town (though famously wandered away from it).  I went to the American Textile History Museum, and I tried to find somewhere to eat at a Sunday lunchtime.  Some pictures from my day are at the top of the post.

There are no doubt a lot of reasons to go to visit Boston itself.  To me, it famous for being the birthplace of some of my favourite bands from the late 80s/early 90s.  I feel like I shouldn't let a visit to UMass go by without posting the Pixies' song UMass.  This version was recorded live at the Tsongas Arena, here on the campus in Lowell.  It's from the Pixies' last album, in 1991, before their long hiatus (their follow-up album was released last year), and is not really one of their better songs, in common with the whole album... but it's certainly relevant for me sitting here in UMass today.