Level structures of Ca cast doubt on a doubly magic Ca

Chen, S.*; Browne, F.*; Doornenbal, P.*; Lee, J.*; Obertelli, A.*; Tsunoda, Yusuke*; Otsuka, Takaharu*; Chazono, Yoshiki*; Hagen, G.*; Holt, J. D.*; et al.

Physics Letters B, 843, p.138025_1 - 138025_7, 2023/08

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2023.138025

Gamma decays were observed in Ca and Ca following quasi-free one-proton knockout reactions from Sc. For Ca, a ray transition was measured to be 1456(12) keV, while for Ca an indication for a transition was observed at 1115(34) keV. Both transitions were tentatively assigned as the decays. A shell-model calculation in a wide model space with a marginally modified effective nucleon-nucleon interaction depicts excellent agreement with experiment for level energies, two-neutron separation energies, and reaction cross sections, corroborating the formation of a new nuclear shell above the N = 34 shell. Its constituents, the and orbitals, are almost degenerate. This degeneracy precludes the possibility for a doubly magic Ca and potentially drives the dripline of Ca isotopes to Ca or even beyond.

Multiple mechanisms in proton-induced nucleon removal at 100 MeV/nucleon

Pohl, T.*; Sun, Y. L.*; Obertelli, A.*; Lee, J.*; Gmez-Ramos, M.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Yoshida, Kazuki; Cai, B. S.*; Yuan, C. X.*; Brown, B. A.*; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 130(17), p.172501_1 - 172501_8, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.172501

We report on the first proton-induced single proton- and neutron-removal reactions from the neutron deficient O nucleus with large Fermi-surface asymmetry at 100 MeV/nucleon. Our results provide the first quantitative contributions of multiple reaction mechanisms including the quasifree knockout, inelastic scattering, and nucleon transfer processes. It is shown that the inelastic scattering and nucleon transfer, usually neglected at such energy regime, contribute about 50% and 30% to the loosely bound proton and deeply bound neutron removal, respectively.

Extended neutron orbital and the shell closure in Ca

Enciu, M.*; Liu, H. N.*; Obertelli, A.*; Doornenbal, P.*; Nowacki, F.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Poves, A.*; Yoshida, Kazuki; Achouri, N. L.*; Baba, Hidetada*; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 129(26), p.262501_1 - 262501_7, 2022/12

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.262501

The one-neutron knockout from Ca was performed at 230 MeV/nucleon combined with prompt spectroscopy. The momentum distributions corresponding to the removal of and neutrons were measured. The cross sections are consistent with a shell closure at the neutron number , found as strong as at and in Ca isotopes from the same observables. The analysis of the momentum distributions leads to a difference of the root-mean-square radii of the neutron and orbitals of 0.61(23) fm, in agreement with the modified-shell-model prediction of 0.7 fm suggesting that the large root-mean-square radius of the orbital in neutron-rich Ca isotopes is responsible for the unexpected linear increase of the charge radius with the neutron number.

Investigation on natural circulation for decay heat removal in reactor vessel of sodium-cooled fast reactor

Aizawa, Kosuke; Tsuji, Mitsuyo; Kobayashi, Jun; Kurihara, Akikazu; Miyake, Yasuhiro*; Nakane, Shigeru*; Ishida, Katsuji*

Proceedings of International Conference on Fast Reactors and Related Fuel Cycles; Sustainable Clean Energy for the Future (FR22) (Internet), 10 Pages, 2022/04

In sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs), optimizing the design and operate decay heat removal systems (DHRSs) is important for safety enhancement against severe accidents that could lead to core melting. The natural circulation phenomena in a reactor vessel during operating a DHRS were clarified by conducting water experiments using a 1:10 scale experimental facility (PHEASANT) simulating the reactor vessel of loop-type SFRs. In this study, we investigated the natural circulation phenomena under conditions of operating the dipped-type DHX and RVACS using the results of temperature and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements, respectively. Furthermore, the effects of temperature fluctuation on the PIV measurement were quantitatively evaluated.

Tree cutting approach for domain partitioning on forest-of-octrees-based block-structured static adaptive mesh refinement with lattice Boltzmann method

Hasegawa, Yuta; Aoki, Takayuki*; Kobayashi, Hiromichi*; Idomura, Yasuhiro; Onodera, Naoyuki

Parallel Computing, 108, p.102851_1 - 102851_12, 2021/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.parco.2021.102851

The aerodynamics simulation code based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) using forest-of-octrees-based block-structured local mesh refinement (LMR) was implemented, and its performance was evaluated on GPU-based supercomputers. We found that the conventional Space-Filling-Curve-based (SFC) domain partitioning algorithm results in costly halo communication in our aerodynamics simulations. Our new tree cutting approach improved the locality and the topology of the partitioned sub-domains and reduced the communication cost to one-third or one-fourth of the original SFC approach. In the strong scaling test, the code achieved maximum speedup at the performance of 2207 MLUPS (mega- lattice update per second) on 128 GPUs. In the weak scaling test, the code achieved 9620 MLUPS at 128 GPUs with 4.473 billion grid points, while the parallel efficiency was 93.4% from 8 to 128 GPUs.

Pairing forces govern population of doubly magic Ca from direct reactions

Browne, F.*; Chen, S.*; Doornenbal, P.*; Obertelli, A.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Utsuno, Yutaka; Yoshida, Kazuki; Achouri, N. L.*; Baba, Hidetada*; Calvet, D.*; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 126(25), p.252501_1 - 252501_7, 2021/06

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.252501

Direct proton-knockout reactions of Sc were studied at the RIKEN Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory. Populated states of Ca were investigated through -ray and invariant-mass spectroscopy. Level energies were calculated from the nuclear shell model employing a phenomenological inter-nucleon interaction. Theoretical cross sections to states were calculated from distorted-wave impulse approximation estimates multiplied by the shell model spectroscopic factors. Despite the calculations showing a significant amplitude of excited neutron configurations in the ground-state of Sc, valence proton removals populated predominantly the ground-state of Ca. This counter-intuitive result is attributed to pairing effects leading to a dominance of the ground-state spectroscopic factor. Owing to the ubiquity of the pairing interaction, this argument should be generally applicable to direct knockout reactions from odd-even to even-even nuclei.

Stabilization of size-controlled BaTiO nanocubes via precise solvothermal crystal growth and their anomalous surface compositional reconstruction

Nakashima, Koichi*; Onagi, Kaito*; Kobayashi, Yoshio*; Ishigaki, Toru*; Ishikawa, Yoshihisa*; Yoneda, Yasuhiro; Yin, S.*; Kakihana, Masato*; Sekino, Toru*

ACS Omega (Internet), 6(14), p.9410 - 9425, 2021/04

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.0c05878

We succeeded in synthesizing barium titanate nanocubes by hydrothermal synthesis. When the nanocubes were examined in detail using a scanning electron microscope, pulsed neutrons, and large synchrotron radiation, it was found that a reconstituted layer of titanium oxide was formed on the surface.

Quasifree neutron knockout reaction reveals a small -Orbital component in the Borromean nucleus B

Yang, Z. H.*; Kubota, Yuki*; Corsi, A.*; Yoshida, Kazuki; Sun, X.-X.*; Li, J. G.*; Kimura, Masaaki*; Michel, N.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Yuan, C. X.*; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 126(8), p.082501_1 - 082501_8, 2021/02

AA2020-0819.pdf:1.29MB

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.082501

A quasifree (,) experiment was performed to study the structure of the Borromean nucleus B, which had long been considered to have a neutron halo. By analyzing the momentum distributions and exclusive cross sections, we obtained the spectroscopic factors for and orbitals, and a surprisingly small percentage of 9(2)% was determined for . Our finding of such a small component and the halo features reported in prior experiments can be explained by the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum, revealing a definite but not dominant neutron halo in B. The present work gives the smallest - or -orbital component among known nuclei exhibiting halo features and implies that the dominant occupation of or orbitals is not a prerequisite for the occurrence of a neutron halo.

Study on cooling process in a reactor vessel of sodium-cooled fast reactor under severe accident; Velocity measurement experiments simulating operation of decay heat removal systems

Tsuji, Mitsuyo; Aizawa, Kosuke; Kobayashi, Jun; Kurihara, Akikazu; Miyake, Yasuhiro*

Proceedings of 2020 International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE 2020) (Internet), 5 Pages, 2020/08

https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE2020-16796

The water experiments using a 1/10 scale experimental apparatus simulating the reactor vessel of SFR were conducted to investigate the natural circulation phenomena in a reactor vessel. In this paper, the natural circulation flow field in the reactor vessel was measured by the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method. The PIV measurement was carried out under the operation of the dipped-type direct heat exchanger (DHX) installed in the upper plenum when 20% of the core fuel fell to the lower plenum and accumulated on the core catcher. From the results of PIV measurement, it was quantitatively confirmed that the upward flow occurred at the center region of the lower and upper plenums. In addition, the downward flows were confirmed near the reactor vessel wall in the upper plenum and through outermost layer of the simulated core in the lower plenum. Moreover, the relationship between the temperature field and the velocity field was investigated in order to understand the natural circulation phenomenon in the reactor vessel. From the above results, it was confirmed that the natural circulation cooling path was established under the dipped-type DHX operation.

Upgrade of the 3-MeV linac for testing of accelerator components at J-PARC

Kondo, Yasuhiro; Hirano, Koichiro; Ito, Takashi; Kikuzawa, Nobuhiro; Kitamura, Ryo; Morishita, Takatoshi; Oguri, Hidetomo; Okoshi, Kiyonori; Shinozaki, Shinichi; Shinto, Katsuhiro; et al.

Journal of Physics; Conference Series, 1350, p.012077_1 - 012077_7, 2019/12

https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1350/1/012077

We have upgraded a 3-MeV linac at J-PARC. The ion source is same as the J-PARC linac's, and the old 30-mA RFQ is replaced by a spare 50-mA RFQ, therefore, the beam energy is 3 MeV and the nominal beam current is 50 mA. The main purpose of this system is to test the spare RFQ, but also used for testing of various components required in order to keep the stable operation of the J-PARC accelerator. The accelerator has been already commissioned, and measurement programs have been started. In this paper, present status of this 3-MeV linac is presented.