Experimental nuclear physics articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    The trapping of triply charged 229mTh3+ is described and its nuclear decay half-life determined, showing useful properties for the development of a nuclear clock and applications in the search for new physics.

    • Atsushi Yamaguchi
    • , Yudai Shigekawa
    •  & Hidetoshi Katori

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resonant X-ray excitation of the  45Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.

    • Yuri Shvyd’ko
    • , Ralf Röhlsberger
    •  & Tomasz Kolodziej

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Observation of 28O and 27O through their decay into 24O and four and three neutrons, respectively, is reported, with the 28O nucleus being of particular interest owing to proton and neutron magic numbers and its extremely asymmetric neutron-to-proton ratio.

    • Y. Kondo
    • , N. L. Achouri
    •  & S. Yoshida

  • Article |

    The authors report on the radiative decay of a low-energy isomer in thorium-229 (229mTh), which has consequences for the design of a future nuclear clock and eases the search for direct laser excitation of the atomic nucleus.

    • Sandro Kraemer
    • , Janni Moens
    •  & Ulrich Wahl

  • Article |

    A comparison of electron scattering from the mirror nuclei hydrogen-3 and helium-3 reveals that proton–proton pairs have a much larger contribution to short-range correlations in helium-3 than in heavier nuclei, implying an unexpected nuclear structure.

    • S. Li
    • , R. Cruz-Torres
    •  & X. Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiment based on knocking out an alpha particle from a high-energy helium isotope shows a resonance-like structure that is consistent with a quasi-bound tetraneutron state existing for a very short time.

    • M. Duer
    • , T. Aumann
    •  & M. V. Zhukov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measuring the hyperfine structure of a single helium-3 ion in a Penning trap enables direct measurement of the nuclear magnetic moment of helium-3 and provides the high accuracy needed for NMR-based magnetometry.

    • A. Schneider
    • , B. Sikora
    •  & K. Blaum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The physics of dense matter extracted from neutron star collision data is demonstrated to be consistent with information obtained from heavy-ion collisions, and analyses incorporating both data sources as well as information from nuclear theory provide new constraints for neutron star matter.

    • Sabrina Huth
    • , Peter T. H. Pang
    •  & Chris Van Den Broeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The CUORE experiment finds no evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay after operating a large cryogenic TeO2 calorimeter stably for several years in an extreme low-radiation environment at a temperature of 10 millikelvin.

    • D. Q. Adams
    • , C. Alduino
    •  & S. Zucchelli

  • Article |

    Electron scattering measurements are shown to reproduce only qualitatively state-of-the-art lepton–nucleus energy reconstruction models, indicating that improvements to these particle-interaction models are required to ensure the accuracy of future high-precision neutrino oscillation experiments.

    • M. Khachatryan
    • , A. Papadopoulou
    •  & S. Gardiner

  • Article |

    Quark–antiquark annihilation measurements provide a precise determination of the ratio of down and up antiquarks within protons as a function of momentum, which confirms the asymmetry between the abundance of down and up antiquarks.

    • J. Dove
    • , B. Kerns
    •  & Z. Ye

  • Article |

    γ-ray spectroscopy experiments on the origin of spin in the products of nuclear fission of spin-zero nuclei suggest that the fission fragments acquire their spin after scission, rather than before.

    • J. N. Wilson
    • , D. Thisse
    •  & S. Ziliani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Suitably shaped X-ray pulses are used to coherently steer the quantum dynamics of atoms’ nuclei rather than their electrons, with few-zeptosecond temporal stability of the phase control.

    • Kilian P. Heeg
    • , Andreas Kaldun
    •  & Jörg Evers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The 2S–2P transitions in muonic helium-4 ions are measured using laser spectroscopy and used to obtain an α-particle charge-radius value five times more precise than that from electron scattering.

    • Julian J. Krauth
    • , Karsten Schuhmann
    •  & Franz Kottmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Correlations in momentum space between hadrons created by ultrarelativistic proton–proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider provide insights into the strong interaction, particularly the short-range dynamics of hyperons—baryons that contain strange quarks.

    • S. Acharya
    • , D. Adamová
    •  & N. Zurlo

  • Article |

    A mechanistic explanation for the origin of the neutron dripline shows that nuclei accommodate the addition of neutrons by becoming increasingly ellipsoidal, up to a maximum number of neutrons, reconciling theory and experiments.

    • Naofumi Tsunoda
    • , Takaharu Otsuka
    •  & Hideki Ueno

  • Article |

    Ionizing radiation from environmental radioactivity and cosmic rays increases the density of broken Cooper pairs in superconducting qubits, reducing their coherence times, but can be partially mitigated by lead shielding.

    • Antti P. Vepsäläinen
    • , Amir H. Karamlou
    •  & William D. Oliver

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements of low-energy electronic states of radium monofluoride validate predictions of the use of this short-lived radioactive molecule in exploring fundamental physics and provide evidence of its suitability for laser cooling.

    • R. F. Garcia Ruiz
    • , R. Berger
    •  & X. F. Yang

  • Article |

    Observations of the decay of 73Sr, when compared to its mirror nucleus 73Br, indicate that the spin assignment of their ground states differ, demonstrating mirror-symmetry violation.

    • D. E. M. Hoff
    • , A. M. Rogers
    •  & S. Waniganeththi

  • Article |

    High-energy electron scattering that can isolate pairs of nucleons in high-momentum configurations reveals a transition to spin-independent scalar forces at small separation distances, supporting the use of point-like nucleon models to describe dense nuclear systems.

    • A. Schmidt
    • , J. R. Pybus
    •  & X. Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ionization cooling, a technique that delivers high-brightness muon beams for the study of phenomena at energy scales beyond those of the Large Hadron Collider, is demonstrated by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment.

    • M. Bogomilov
    • , R. Tsenov
    •  & C. Heidt

  • Article |

    A magnetic-spectrometer-free method for electron–proton scattering data reveals a proton charge radius 2.7 standard deviations smaller than the currently accepted value from electron–proton scattering, yet consistent with other recent experiments.

    • W. Xiong
    • , A. Gasparian
    •  & Z. W. Zhao

  • Letter |

    Excitation to the second excited state of 229Th is used to populate the metastable state 229mTh, enabling accurate determination of the isomer’s energy, half-life and excitation linewidth.

    • Takahiko Masuda
    • , Akihiro Yoshimi
    •  & Koji Yoshimura

  • Letter |

    The transition energy of the first excited state of 229Th to the ground state is determined through the measurement of internal conversion electrons to correspond to a wavelength of 149.7 ± 3.1 nanometres.

    • Benedict Seiferle
    • , Lars von der Wense
    •  & Peter G. Thirolf

  • Perspective |

    Three years of investigation by a multi-disciplinary team into claims of ‘cold fusion’ found no evidence that the phenomenon exists, but identified a parameter space potentially worthy of further exploration.

    • Curtis P. Berlinguette
    • , Yet-Ming Chiang
    •  & Matthew D. Trevithick

  • Letter |

    Simultaneous high-precision measurements of the EMC effect and short-range correlated abundances for several nuclei reveal a universal modification of the structure of nucleons in short-range correlated neutron–proton pairs.

    • B. Schmookler
    • , M. Duer
    •  & X. Zheng

  • Letter |

    The thermal neutron capture cross-section of 88Zr is measured to be 861,000 ± 69,000 barns, the second-largest neutron capture cross-section ever measured.

    • Jennifer A. Shusterman
    • , Nicholas D. Scielzo
    •  & Anton P. Tonchev

  • Letter |

    Electron-scattering experiments reveal that the fraction of high-momentum protons in medium-to-heavy nuclei increases considerably with neutron excess, whereas that of high-momentum neutrons decreases slightly, in contrast to shell-model predictions.

    • M. Duer
    • , O. Hen
    •  & Z. W. Zhao

  • Letter |

    Measurement of the asymmetry in the parity-violating scattering of polarized electrons on protons gives the weak charge of the proton as 0.0719 ± 0.0045, in agreement with the standard model.

    • D. Androić
    • , D. S. Armstrong
    •  & S. Zhamkochyan

  • Letter |

    Ground-based observations during a thunderstorm provide conclusive evidence of positrons being produced after lightning, confirming that lightning can trigger photonuclear reactions.

    • Teruaki Enoto
    • , Yuuki Wada
    •  & Harufumi Tsuchiya

  • Letter |

    The measurement of an alignment between the angular momentum of a non-central collision between heavy ions and the spin of emitted particles reveals that the fluid produced in the collision is extremely vortical.

    • L. Adamczyk
    • , J. K. Adkins
    •  & M. Zyzak

Browse broader subjects

Browse Experimental nuclear physics across other nature.com journals