Workshop and laboratory visit in Jyväskylä for the Nuclear Physics Board of the EPS
The 77th meeting of the Nuclear Physics Board of the EPS took place in Jyväskylä, Finland, on April 1-2 2019. The meeting was preceded by a workshop and a visit of the local laboratory.
The workshop, comprising 8 talks, presented an overview of the scientific activities carried out at the Physics Department of the University of Jyväskylä (JYFL). Timo Sajavaara, vice-head of the department, established the context for the following talks. JYFL is part of a 150-year-old campus, in part designed by the famous Finnish architect Alvaar Alto. Its staff, about 200 people, is involved in research spanning from sub-atomic to material physics, mainly accelerator based. About 40% of the JYFL budget, about 14M€/year, comes from external sources. Two ERC grants were recently awarded to JYFL.
Iain Moore presented the JYFL Accelerator Laboratory: the northernmost of large-scale European infrastructures, it is an EU-access facility, hosting around 300 foreign users annually. It is one of the four recognised test sites for the European Space Agency (ESA). The laboratory hosts four accelerators with a variety of ion sources and innovative instrumentation. The fundamental research carried out at the JYFL accelerator, driven by key questions in line with the Long Range Plan of NuPECC, is balanced by ion-beam based commercial (800k€/year) and societal applications.
Anu Kankainen, who holds an ERC Consolidator Grant (CoG), presented the fundamental research at the JYFL accelerator. The IGISOL mass separator is the heart of the infrastructure, producing a broad range of ion beams. The JYFLTRAP double Penning trap, used for high-precision atomic mass measurements and beam purification, is an essential part of IGISOL. Decay spectroscopy studies at IGISOL use state-of-the-art detectors, such as DTAS and MONSTER of NUSTAR at FAIR. IGISOL provides relevant data for the understanding of nuclear structure and for nuclear astrophysics.
Markus Kortelainen provided highlights of the studies carried out by the two teams working on nuclear theory at JYFL. The FIDIPRO group aims to improve the current description of the global properties of nuclei. The nuclear density functional theory and its applications are their focus. The nuclear-theory group develops nuclear-structure models and applies them to topics of weak-interaction physics, such as neutrino-nucleus interactions at supernova energies, rare weak decays, and direct dark-matter detection.
Still on the theoretical side, Tuomas Lappin, holder of the other ERC CoG awarded to JYFL, presented the activities of his group on QCD theory. Their work covers perturbative QCD in nuclear processes, small-x physics, initial stages of heavy ion collisions and their hydro-dynamical modeling. The group works in synergy with experiments, in particular those at LHC (ALICE) and RHIC, as well as on building the physics cases for the future Electro-Ion Collider (EIC), LHeC, and FAIR-CBM.
The talks of Ari Virtanen and Kai Arstila provided an overview of the applications of the JYFL ion beams. Virtanen’s team works on two main fronts: microfilter production of membranes for European industries and the testing of radiation effects in space electronics at the RADiation Effect Facility (RADEF). RADEF is an ESA facility, with more than 80 international users. The research activities of Arstila’s group cover three areas: fundamental studies of ion–matter interactions; detector, data acquisition, and analysis software development; application of ion beam techniques for materials and thin film studies, mainly geared towards cultural heritage preservation.
The workshop ended with Wladislw Trzaska’s presentation on the ALICE experiment at LHC. Beyond its involvement in data analysis for the extraction of flow harmonics and high-momentum correlations, the JYFL ALICE team participated strongly in the design and construction of the forward trigger detector T0, and to its maintenance and operation. During the upcoming Long Shutdown, one new detector (Forward Interaction Trigger, FIT) will replace the existing trigger detectors. The JYFL group leads the international FIT collaboration.
The full program of the mini-workshop can be found here.
After the workshop, the Board visited the Accelerator Laboratory, guided by its director, Paul Greenlees. The highlights of the visit are shown in the photos here below.
