PhD Student Projects
A range of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) projects are available in the Department of Nuclear Physics. Some of these are listed below.
Autralian/New Zealand students should contact our Department Student Co-ordinator, Dr Nanda Dasgupta (Mahananda.Dasgupta@anu.edu.au), for further information on PhD programs.
International Students with excellent academic records should contact Ms Anna Cirjak, Graduate Development Officer, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering (Anna.Cirjak@anu.edu.au) for more information.
Experimental/data analysis
Objective
To search for evidence of highly extended shapes in isotopes of iodine and xenon.Description
The observation of superdeformed states in atomic nuclei, in which the nucleus adopts an extremely deformed, rugby-ball shape with a major:minor axis ratio around 2:1, was one of the most exciting discoveries of modern nuclear structure studies. These states are stabilized by a combination of macroscopic (Coulomb and rotational) and microscopic (shell structure) effects. Because the nucleus is deformed, it can rotate (a spherically symmetric quantum system cannot exhibit roational degrees of freedom), and superdeformed nuclei are identified experimentally by the long sequences of regularly-spaced gamma-ray transitions between excited nuclear levels corresponding to a rotational band. Hyperdeformed states, in which the nucleus is even more deformed (with an axis ratio approaching 3:1) have been predicted for some time now but have not yet been experimentally observed.
The project will involve analysis of gamma ray coincidence data obtained using the two multi-detector arrays, Euroball IV and Gammasphere, in order to search for evidence of such highly deformed states. Depending on the student's preferences, the project can be focussed on either discovering and interpreting the high spin structure of the nuclei under study, or on developing computer algorithms to search for the weak signals of hyperdeformation.