Search

A detailed knowledge of the decay properties of the so called Hoyle state in the $^{12}$C nucleus ($E_x=7.654$ MeV, $0^+$) is required to calculate the rate at which carbon is forged in typical red-giant stars. This paper reports on a new almost background-free measurement of the radiative decay branching ratio of the Hoyle state using advanced charged particle coincidence techniques. The exploitation, for the first time in a similar experiment, of a bidimensional map of the coincidence efficiency allows to reach an unitary value and, consequently, to strongly reduce sources of systematic uncertainties. The present results suggest a value of the radiative branching ratio of $\Gamma_{rad}/\Gamma_{tot}=4.2(6)\cdot10^{-4}$. This finding helps to resolve the tension between recent data published in the literature.

An investigation of the isospin equilibration process in the reactions $^{58,64}$Ni+$^{58,64}$Ni at two bombarding energies in the Fermi regime ($32\,$MeV/nucleon and $52\,$MeV/nucleon) is presented. Data have been acquired during the first experimental campaign of the coupled INDRA-FAZIA apparatus in GANIL. Selecting from peripheral to semi-central collisions, both the neutron content of the quasiprojectile residue and that of the light ejectiles coming from the quasiprojectile evaporation have been used as probes of the dynamical process of isospin diffusion between projectile and target for the asymmetric systems. The isospin transport ratio technique has been employed. The relaxation of the initial isospin imbalance with increasing centrality has been clearly evidenced. The isospin equilibration appears stronger for the reactions at $32\,$MeV/nucleon, as expected due to the longer projectile-target interaction time than at $52\,$MeV/nucleon. Coherent indications of isospin equilibration come from the quasiprojectile residue characteristics and from particles ascribed to the quasiprojectile decay.

In this paper the technological aspects of the FAZIA array will be explored. After a productive commissioning phase, FAZIA blocks started to measure and give very useful data to explore the physics of Fermi energy heavy-ion reactions. This was possible thanks to many technical measures and innovations developed in the commissioning phase and tuned during the first experimental campaigns. This paper gives a detailed description of the present status of the FAZIA setup from the electronic and mechanical point of view, trying also to trace a path for new improvements and refinements of the apparatus., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures

The decay path of the Hoyle state in $^{12}$C ($E_x=7.654\textrm{MeV}$) has been studied with the $^{14}\textrm{N}(\textrm{d},\alpha_2)^{12}\textrm{C}(7.654)$ reaction induced at $10.5\textrm{MeV}$. High resolution invariant mass spectroscopy techniques have allowed to unambiguously disentangle direct and sequential decays of the state passing through the ground state of $^{8}$Be. Thanks to the almost total absence of background and the attained resolution, a fully sequential decay contribution to the width of the state has been observed. The direct decay width is negligible, with an upper limit of $0.043\%$ ($95\%$ C.L.). The precision of this result is about a factor $5$ higher than previous studies. This has significant implications on nuclear structure, as it provides constraints to $3$-$\alpha$ cluster model calculations, where higher precision limits are needed.

This article proves the Voronoi conjecture on parallelotopes in the special case of 3-irreducible tilings. Parallelotopes are convex polytopes which tile the Euclidean space by their translated copies, like in the honeycomb arrangement of hexagons in the plane. An important example of parallelotope is the Dirichlet-Voronoi domain for a translation lattice. For each point $x$ in a translation lattice, we define its Dirichlet-Voronoi (DV) domain to be the set of points in the space which are at least as close to $x$ as to any other lattice point. The Voronoi conjecture, formulated by the great Ukrainian mathematician George Voronoi in 1908, states that any parallelotope is affinely equivalent to the DV-domain for some lattice. Our work proves the Voronoi conjecture for 3-irreducible parallelotope tilings of arbitrary dimension: we define the 3-irreducibility as the property of having only irreducible dual 3-cells. This result generalizes a theorem of Zhitomirskii (1927), and suggests a way to solve the conjecture in the general case.

A study of identification properties of a Si-Si DE-E telescope exploiting an underdepleted residual-energy detector has been performed. Five different bias voltages have been used, one corresponding to full depletion, the others associated with a depleted layer ranging from 90% to 60% of the detector thickness. Fragment identification has been performed using either the DE-E technique or Pulse Shape Analysis (PSA). Both detectors are reverse mounted: particles enter from the low field side, to enhance the PSA performance. The achieved charge and mass resolution has been quantitatively expressed using a Figure of Merit (FoM). Charge collection efficiency has been evaluated and the possibility of energy calibration corrections has been considered. We find that the DE-E performance is not affected by incomplete depletion even when only 60% of the wafer is depleted. Isotopic separation capability improves at lower bias voltages with respect to full depletion, though charge identification thresholds are higher than at full depletion. Good isotopic identification via PSA has been obtained from a partially depleted detector whose doping uniformity is not good enough for isotopic identification at full depletion., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures 5 tables; submitted to European Physical Journal A

An upgraded GARFIELD + Ring Counter (RCo) apparatus is presented with improved performances as far as electronics and detectors are concerned. On one side fast sampling digital read out has been extended to all detectors, allowing for an important simplification of the signal processing chain together with an enriched extracted information. On the other side a relevant improvement has been made in the forward part of the setup (RCo): an increased granularity of the CsI(Tl) crystals and a higher homogeneity in the silicon detector resistivity. The renewed performances of the GARFIELD + RCo array make it suitable for nuclear reaction measurements both with stable and with Radioactive Ion Beams (RIB), like the ones foreseen for the SPES facility, where the Physics of Isospin can be studied., Comment: 13 pages, 19 figures - paper submitted to Eur. Phys. J. A

The european Fazia collaboration aims at building a new modular array for charged product identification to be employed for heavy-ion studies. The elementary module of the array is a Silicon-Silicon-CsI telescope, optimized for ion identification also via pulse shape analysis. The achievement of top performances imposes specific electronics which has been developed by FAZIA and features high quality charge and current preamplifiers, coupled to fully digital front-end. During the initial R&D phase, original and novel solutions have been tested in prototypes, obtaining unprecedented ion identification capabilities. FAZIA is now constructing a demonstrator array consisting of about two hundreds telescopes arranged in a compact and transportable configuration. In this contribution, we mainly summarize some aspects studied by FAZIA to improve the ion identification. Then we will briefly discuss the FAZIA program centered on experiments to be done with the demonstrator. First results on the isospin dynamics obtained with a reduced set-up demonstrate well the performance of the telescope and represent a good starting point towards future investigations with both stable and exotic beams., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to conference proceedings of the 25th International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC 2013) Journal-ref: 25th International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC 2013), Firenze : Italy (2013)

In this Technical Design Report (TDR) we describe the SuperB detector that was to be installed on the SuperB e+e- high luminosity collider. The SuperB asymmetric collider, which was to be constructed on the Tor Vergata campus near the INFN Frascati National Laboratory, was designed to operate both at the Upsilon(4S) center-of-mass energy with a luminosity of 10^{36} cm^{-2}s^{-1} and at the tau/charm production threshold with a luminosity of 10^{35} cm^{-2}s^{-1}. This high luminosity, producing a data sample about a factor 100 larger than present B Factories, would allow investigation of new physics effects in rare decays, CP Violation and Lepton Flavour Violation. This document details the detector design presented in the Conceptual Design Report (CDR) in 2007. The R&D and engineering studies performed to arrive at the full detector design are described, and an updated cost estimate is presented. A combination of a more realistic cost estimates and the unavailability of funds due of the global economic climate led to a formal cancelation of the project on Nov 27, 2012., Comment: 495 pages

A parallelohedron is called reducible, if it can be represented as a direct product of two parallelohedra of lower dimension. In his Ph.D. thesis (2005) the first author proved a criterion of reducibility of a parallelohedron in terms of the Venkov graph. In December 2011 the second author presented a slightly revised version of the original proof at the seminar "Discrete Geometry and Geometry of Numbers" (Moscow State University). The present paper follows that talk., Comment: 12 pages, Russian text, Russian and English abstract

A polytope $D$ whose vertices belong to a lattice of rank $d$ is Delaunay if there is a circumscribing $d$-dimensional ellipsoid, $E$, with interior free of lattice points so that the vertices of $D$ lie on $E$. If in addition, the ellipsoid $E$ is uniquely determined by $D$, we call $D$ perfect. That is, a perfect Delaunay polytope is a lattice polytope with a circumscribing empty ellipsoid $E$, where the quadratic surface $\partial E$ both contains the vertices of $D$ and is determined by them. We have been able to construct infinite sequences of perfect Delaunay polytopes, one perfect polytope in each successive dimension starting at some initial dimension; we have been able to construct an infinite number of such infinite sequences. Perfect Delaunay polytopes play an important role in the theory of Delaunay polytopes, and in Voronoi's theory of lattice types., Comment: 24 pages, including 2 figures

Symmetry energy is a key quantity in the study of the equation of state of asymmetric nuclear matter. Heavy ion collisions at low and intermediate energies, performed at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro and Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, can be used to extract information on the symmetry energy coefficient Csym, which is currently poorly known but relevant both for astrophysics and for structure of exotic nuclei., Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Radioactive Nuclear Beams (RNB7), to be published in The European Physical Journal A

The total cross section of 12C(alpha,gamma)16O was measured for the first time by a direct and ungated detection of the 16O recoils. This measurement in inverse kinematics using the recoil mass separator ERNA in combination with a windowless He gas target allowed to collect data with high precision in the energy range E=1.9 to 4.9 MeV. The data represent new information for the determination of the astrophysical S(E) factor., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication Eur.Phys.J. A (Online first available)

A lattice Delaunay polytope D is called perfect if it has the property that there is a unique circumscribing ellipsoid with interior free of lattice points, and with the surface containing only those lattice points that are the vertices of D. An inhomogeneous quadratic form is called perfect if it is determined by such a circumscribing ''empty ellipsoid'' uniquely up to a scale factor. Perfect inhomogeneous forms are associated with perfect Delaunay polytopes in much the way that perfect homogeneous forms are associated with perfect point lattices. We have been able to construct some infinite sequences of perfect Delaunay polytopes, one perfect polytope in each successive dimension starting at some initial dimension; we have been able to construct an infinite number of such infinite sequences. Perfect Delaunay polytopes are intimately related to the theory of Delaunay polytopes, and to Voronoi's theory of lattice types., Comment: Release 3: 25 pages, 4 diagrams. A number of errors in notation, terminology, citations, and cross-references have been fixed. Note that in all diagrams kappa should read as k. A reduced 10 page version of this article will apear in the proceedings of the 2003 Voronoi Conference held in Kiev in September of 2003