Development of a non-destructive depth-selective quantification method for sub-percent carbon contents in steel using negative muon lifetime analysis

Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Kubo, Kenya*; Inagaki, Makoto*; Yoshida, Go*; Chiu, I.-H. ; Kudo, Takuto*; Asari, Shunsuke*; Sentoku, Sawako*; Takeshita, Soshi*; Shimomura, Koichiro*; et al.

Scientific Reports (Internet), 14, p.1797_1 - 1797_8, 2024/01

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52255-5

The amount of C in steel, which is critical in determining its properties, is strongly influenced by steel production technology. We propose a novel method of quantifying the bulk C content in steel non-destructively using muons. This revolutionary method may be used not only in the quality control of steel in production, but also in analyzing precious steel archaeological artifacts. A negatively charged muon forms an atomic system owing to its negative charge, and is finally absorbed into the nucleus or decays to an electron. The lifetimes of muons differ significantly, depending on whether they are trapped by Fe or C atoms, and identifying the elemental content at the muon stoppage position is possible via muon lifetime measurements. The relationship between the muon capture probabilities of C/Fe and the elemental content of C exhibits a good linearity, and the C content in the steel may be quantitatively determined via muon lifetime measurements. Furthermore, by controlling the incident energies of the muons, they may be stopped in each layer of a stacked sample consisting of three types of steel plates with thicknesses of 0.5 mm, and we successfully determined the C contents in the range 0.20 - 1.03 wt% depth-selectively, without sample destruction.

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.

Development of nondestructive elemental analysis system for Hayabusa2 samples using muonic X-rays

Osawa, Takahito; Nagasawa, Shunsaku*; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Nakamura, Tomoki*; Wada, Taiga*; Taniguchi, Akihiro*; Umegaki, Izumi*; Kubo, Kenya*; Terada, Kentaro*; et al.

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry (Internet), 7(4), p.699 - 711, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00303

The concentrations of carbon and other major elements in asteroid samples provide very important information on the birth of life on the Earth and the solar-system evolution. Elemental analysis using muonic X-rays is one of the best analytical methods to determine the elemental composition of solid materials, and notably, is the only method to determine the concentration of light elements in bulk samples in a non-destructive manner. We developed a new analysis system using muonic X-rays to measure the concentrations of carbon and other major elements in precious and expectedly tiny samples recovered from the asteroid Ryugu by spacecraft Hayabusa2. Here we report the development process of the system in 4 stages and their system configurations, The analysis system is composed of a stainless-steel analysis chamber, an acrylic glove box for manipulating asteroid samples in a clean environment, and Ge semiconductor detectors arranged to surround the analysis chamber. The performance of the analysis system, including the background level, which is crucial for the measurement, was greatly improved from the first stage to the later ones. Our feasibility study showed that the latest model of our muonic X-ray analysis system is capable of determining the carbon concentration in Hayabusa2's sample model with an uncertainty of less than 10 percent in a 6-day measurement.

Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library version 5; JENDL-5

Iwamoto, Osamu; Iwamoto, Nobuyuki; Kunieda, Satoshi; Minato, Futoshi; Nakayama, Shinsuke; Abe, Yutaka*; Tsubakihara, Kosuke*; Okumura, Shin*; Ishizuka, Chikako*; Yoshida, Tadashi*; et al.

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 60(1), p.1 - 60, 2023/01

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2022.2141903

decay of exotic P and S isotopes with neutron number near 28

Tripathi, V.*; Bhattacharya, S.*; Rubino, E.*; Benetti, C.*; Perello, J. F.*; Tabor, S. L.*; Liddick, S. N.*; Bender, P. C.*; Carpenter, M. P.*; Carroll, J. J.*; et al.

Physical Review C, 106(6), p.064314_1 - 064314_14, 2022/12

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.106.064314

no abstracts in English

Experimental study of liquid spreading and atomization due to jet impingement in liquid-liquid systems

Yamamura, Sota*; Fujiwara, Kota*; Honda, Kota*; Yoshida, Hiroyuki; Horiguchi, Naoki; Kaneko, Akiko*; Abe, Yutaka*

Physics of Fluids, 34(8), p.082110_1 - 082110_13, 2022/08

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0100340

Liquid spreading and atomization due to jet impingement in liquid-liquid systems are considered to be crucial for understanding the cooling behavior of high-temperature molten material in a shallow water pool. This phenomenon takes place when a liquid jet enters a pool filled with other immiscible liquid. The jet spreads radially after impinging on the floor while forming a thin liquid film and atomizing droplets. In this paper, we explain the result to quantify the unsteady three-dimensional behavior of the spreading jet by the employment of 3D-LIF measurements and 3-dimensional reconstruction. Under high flow velocity conditions, the phenomena of hydraulic jump and atomization of the liquid film occurred along with the spreading. To evaluate the spreading behavior, a comparison of the jump radius position of the liquid-liquid system as the representative value was made with the one calculated by the existing theory of a gas-liquid system. As the result, the spreading of the liquid film in the liquid-liquid system was suppressed compared with that in the gas-liquid system. Furthermore, the PTV method was successfully used to measure the velocity boundary layer and velocity profile in the liquid film, which are important factors that affect the spreading mechanism of the liquid film. These results revealed that in liquid-liquid systems, shear stress at the liquid-liquid interface causes a decrease in the flow velocity and suppressed the development of the velocity boundary layer. Also, to evaluate the atomization behavior, the number and diameter distribution of the droplets were measured from the acquired 3-dimensional shape data of the jet. As the result, the number of droplets increased with the flow velocity. Based on these results, we concluded that the spreading of the liquid film is affected by such atomization behavior.

Time-resolved 3D visualization of liquid jet breakup and impingement behavior in a shallow liquid pool

Kimura, Fumihito*; Yamamura, Sota*; Fujiwara, Kota*; Yoshida, Hiroyuki; Saito, Shimpei*; Kaneko, Akiko*; Abe, Yutaka*

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 389, p.111660_1 - 111660_11, 2022/04

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2022.111660

Development of dispersed phase tracking method for time-series 3-dimensional interface shape data

Horiguchi, Naoki; Yoshida, Hiroyuki; Yamamura, Sota*; Fujiwara, Kota*; Kaneko, Akiko*; Abe, Yutaka*

Proceedings of 19th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-19) (Internet), 14 Pages, 2022/03

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.

First spectroscopic study of Ar by the (,2) reaction

Juhsz, M. M.*; Elekes, Z.*; Sohler, D.*; Utsuno, Yutaka; Yoshida, Kazuki; Otsuka, Takaharu*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Doornenbal, P.*; Obertelli, A.*; Baba, Hidetada*; et al.

Physics Letters B, 814, p.136108_1 - 136108_8, 2021/03

AA2020-0747.pdf:0.83MB

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2021.136108

The nuclear structure of Ar was studied by the (,2) reaction using -ray spectroscopy for the bound and unbound states. Comparing the results to our shell-model calculations, two bound and six unbound states were established. The low cross sections populating the two bound states of Ar could be interpreted as a clear signature for the presence of significant sub-shell closures at neutron numbers 32 and 34 in argon isotopes.