Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory

Last updated
Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory
Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory logo retrieved 2016.gif
Established1965 (1965)
Research typeNuclear Physics
Director Arthur Champagne
Staff 100
Location Durham, North Carolina, United States
Campus TUNL is located on Duke University's West Campus
Operating agency
 Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University
Website www.tunl.duke.edu

The Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, abbreviated as TUNL (pronounced as "tunnel"), is a tripartite research consortium operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University. The laboratory is located on the West Campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Researchers are now drawn from several other universities around the United States in addition to members from the founding universities. [1] TUNL also participates in long term collaborations with universities and laboratories around the world. [2] Funding for TUNL comes primarily from the United States Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Physics. [3]

Contents

TUNL operates three laboratory facilities, all of which reside on Duke University's campus. Two of the facilities, the Tandem Accelerator Laboratory and the Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics, are low energy charged beam accelerators. [4] The third facility is the High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source (HIGS), which produces the highest intensity polarized Gamma ray beams in the world. [5] TUNL is also involved in off-site research projects, including the Majorana Demonstrator Experiment, an ongoing Double beta decay experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. [2]

History

View of TUNL Lab Level Rear view of TUNL.JPG
View of TUNL Lab Level

Research at TUNL is focused on nuclear physics, including studies on Fundamental symmetries, Neutrinos, Nuclear astrophysics, and Hadron structure. [3] TUNL also conducts applied research, investigating the applications of nuclear physics to topics such as National security, Public health, and Plant physiology. [2] The Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory was established in 1965, with a $2.5 Million grant from the United States Atomic Energy Commission providing the funding for a new 15 MeV Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator as well as a 15 MeV Cyclotron. [6] After three years of construction and testing, the new accelerator facility became operational in December 1968. [7] Henry Newson, a nuclear physics professor at Duke University, was responsible for the proposal, was the original proponent of combining the efforts of the three universities, and served as the first director of the new laboratory. [8] The Tandem Generator and the Cyclotron at TUNL were combined into what was named a Cyclo-Graaff accelerator. Ions would first be accelerated in the Cyclotron. Then, once the initial energy was high enough, the beam from the cyclotron would be injected into the Tandem Generator where it would be further accelerated. Using the accelerators together effectively doubled the maximum energy that the lab could reach when compared to the energies of each individual accelerator. [6] This combination, the Cyclo-Graaff, would be used by Henry Newson to study Nuclear Structure until his death in 1978. [6]

Facilities

Tandem Laboratory

An FN Tandem Van de Graaff Generator with a maximum terminal voltage of 10 Mega Volts. [2] The facility can produce light ion beams made up of Protons, Deuterons, 3He Nuclei, and 4He Nuclei. [4] The proton and neutron beams produced at the Tandem Laboratory are available either polarized or unpolarized depending on the experiment requirements. [9] Through secondary beam collisions, the lab can also produce polarized neutron beams, allowing the lab to study neutron interactions. [9] The Tandem Lab is primarily intended to study the Strong force at low energies. [2] Research at Tandem includes few-nucleon dynamics, 2-nucleon transfer reactions, and neutron multiplication. [9]

High Intensity Gamma-ray Source

The High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source (HIGS) produces gamma-rays by means of Compton backscattering. [9] This occurs when photons from a Free-electron laser collide with accelerated Electrons, producing a beam of high energy photons with a very precise energy and a high degree of polarization. [4] The gamma-ray beams can be produced with energies ranging from 1-100 MeV with a maximum intensity of 1000 /s/eV, making HIGS the highest intensity accelerator driven gamma-ray source in the world. [2] [9] Research at HIGS can be broken broadly into two groups: Nuclear Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics, with reactions such as (, '), (, n), and (, ), along with Low-energy QCD, with studies on Compton scattering and Photo-Pion production. [3]

Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics

The two accelerators housed at LENA combine to cover the entire range of energy values up to 1 MeV and produce beams that are both stable and intense. [10] The lab focuses on light ion beams with high current that are optimized for applications to nuclear astrophysics. [2] Research topics at LENA include the nuclear reactions that drive astrophysical processes such as Stellar evolution, Novae, and X-ray bursts. [3]

Education

Education in nuclear physics is provided at both a graduate and undergraduate level to students at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. TUNL draws around 40 graduate students from the three founding universities. Graduates find employment in diverse settings, including faculty positions, industry positions, and positions at government research facilities and the National Laboratories. [11] Graduates George A. Keyworth II and John H. Gibbons served as presidential science advisers to presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton respectively. [7]

One component of undergraduate education provided by TUNL is the TUNL/Duke Research Experiences for Undergraduates, a ten-week program funded by the National Science Foundation offered during the summer with locations on TUNL's campus as well as a limited number of positions at CERN. [2] [12] Undergraduates from the three founding universities as well as other associated universities conduct research with faculty members throughout the year. [13]

Related Research Articles

Cyclotron Type of particle accelerator

A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. A cyclotron accelerates charged particles outwards from the center of a flat cylindrical vacuum chamber along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying electric field. Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Research center at Stanford University

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and located in Menlo Park, California. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 and shut down in the 2000s, which could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.

Compton scattering Scattering of photons off charged particles

Compton scattering, discovered by Arthur Holly Compton, is the scattering of a high frequency photon after an interaction with a stationary charged particle, usually an electron. If it results in a decrease in energy of the photon, it is called the Compton effect. Part of the energy of the photon is transferred to the recoiling electron. Inverse Compton scattering occurs when a charged particle transfers part of its energy to a photon.

Synchrotron radiation Electromagnetic radiation emitted by charged particles accelerated perpendicular to their velocity

Synchrotron radiation is the electromagnetic radiation emitted when relativistic charged particles are subject to an acceleration perpendicular to their velocity. It is produced artificially in some types of particle accelerators, or naturally by fast electrons moving through magnetic fields. The radiation produced in this way has a characteristic polarization and the frequencies generated can range over a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory Building in Michigan, United States

The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), located on the campus of Michigan State University was a rare isotope research facility in the United States. Established in 1963, the cyclotron laboratory has been succeeded by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a linear accelerator providing beam to the same detector halls.

Synchrocyclotron

A synchrocyclotron is a special type of cyclotron, patented by Edwin McMillan in 1952, in which the frequency of the driving RF electric field is varied to compensate for relativistic effects as the particles' velocity begins to approach the speed of light. This is in contrast to the classical cyclotron, where this frequency is constant.

TRIUMF Particle physics laboratory in Canada

TRIUMF is Canada's national particle accelerator centre. It is considered Canada's premier physics laboratory, and consistently regarded as one of the world's leading subatomic physics research centers. Owned and operated by a consortium of universities, it is on the south campus of one of its founding members, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. It houses the world's largest cyclotron, a source of 520 MeV protons, which was named an IEEE Milestone in 2010. Its accelerator-focused activities involve particle physics, nuclear physics, nuclear medicine, materials science, and detector and accelerator development.

United States Department of Energy national laboratories Laboratories owned by the United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers are a system of facilities and laboratories overseen by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for scientific and technological research. Sixteen of the seventeen DOE national laboratories are federally funded research and development centers administered, managed, operated and staffed by private-sector organizations under management and operating (M&O) contract with DOE.

Paul Scherrer Institute Swiss federal research institute

The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is a multi-disciplinary research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. It is located in the Canton of Aargau in the municipalities Villigen and Würenlingen on either side of the River Aare, and covers an area over 35 hectares in size. Like ETH Zurich and EPFL, PSI belongs to the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain of the Swiss Confederation. The PSI employs around 2,100 people. It conducts basic and applied research in the fields of matter and materials, human health, and energy and the environment. About 37% of PSI’s research activities focus on material sciences, 24% on life sciences, 19% on general energy, 11% on nuclear energy and safety, and 9% on particle physics.

On-Line Isotope Mass Separator On-line isotope separator facility at CERN

The ISOLDE Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, is an on-line isotope separator facility located at the heart of the CERN accelerator complex on the Franco-Swiss border. The name of the facility is an acronym for Isotope Separator On Line DEvice. Created in 1964, the ISOLDE facility started delivering radioactive ion beams to users in 1967. Originally located at the SynchroCyclotron accelerator, the facility has been upgraded several times most notably in 1992 when the whole facility was moved to be connected to CERN's ProtonSynchroton Booster (PSB). Entering its 6th decade of existence, ISOLDE is currently the oldest facility still in operation at CERN. From the first pioneering isotope separation on-line (ISOL) beams to the latest technical advances allowing for the production of the most exotic species, ISOLDE benefits a wide range of physics communities with applications covering nuclear, atomic, molecular and solid-state physics, but also biophysics and astrophysics, as well as high-precision experiments looking for physics beyond the Standard Model. The facility is operated by the ISOLDE Collaboration, comprising CERN and fifteen (mostly) European countries. As of 2019, more than 800 experimentalists around the world are coming to ISOLDE to perform typically 45 different experiments per year.

Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System Particle accelerator

The Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) is a U.S. Department of Energy scientific user facility at Argonne National Laboratory. ATLAS is the first superconducting linear accelerator for heavy ions at energies in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier and is open to scientists from all over the world.

Electron scattering Deviation of electrons from their original trajectories

Electron scattering occurs when electrons are deviated from their original trajectory. This is due to the electrostatic forces within matter interaction or, if an external magnetic field is present, the electron may be deflected by the Lorentz force. This scattering typically happens with solids such as metals, semiconductors and insulators; and is a limiting factor in integrated circuits and transistors.

Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar

Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar is an autonomous research institution of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India. The institute was founded by Professor Bidhu Bhusan Das, who was Director of Public Instruction, Odisha, at that time. Das set up the institute in 1972, supported by the Government of Odisha under the patronage of Odisha's education minister Banamali Patnaik, and chose Dr. Trilochan Pradhan as its first director, when the Institute started theoretical research programs in the various branches of physics. Other notable physicists in the institute's early days included Prof. T. P. Das, of SUNY, Albany, New York, USA and Prof. Jagdish Mohanty of the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Kanpur and Australian National University, Canberra. In 1981, the Institute moved to its present campus near Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneswar. It was taken over by the Department of Atomic Energy, India on 25 March 1985 and started functioning as an autonomous body.

University of Massachusetts Lowell Radiation Laboratory Laboratory in Lowell, Massachusetts

The Radiation Laboratory at the US University of Massachusetts Lowell serves the Department of Applied Physics among others. The laboratory contains a 1 MW pool-type nuclear research reactor (UMLRR) that has been operating since 1974, a 300 kCi Co-60 gamma ray source, and a 5.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator.

Particle accelerator Research apparatus for particle physics

A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams.

A Fixed-Field alternating gradient Accelerator (FFA) is a circular particle accelerator concept that can be characterized by its time-independent magnetic fields and the use of alternating gradient strong focusing.

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References

  1. ↑ "TUNL Faculty". Duke University. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "TUNL Progress Report 2012-2013" (PDF). Duke University. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Howell TUNL Facilities" (PDF). Florida State University. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 "TUNL Facilities". Duke University. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  5. ↑ "TUNL HIGS" . Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 "Low-Energy, High Impact Physics". Duke University. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  7. 1 2 "Secret Sauce". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  8. ↑ "Duke University Physics Department Historical Faculty 1963-1985" . Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory Facilities Review" (PDF). Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics" . Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  11. ↑ "Graduate Education at TUNL" . Retrieved August 8, 2016.
  12. ↑ "TUNL/Duke REU" . Retrieved August 8, 2016.
  13. ↑ "Nuclear Physics Education" . Retrieved August 8, 2016.
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