nuclear physics in poland 1996 – 2006

visible light and a CCD camera will record a 2-Dimage of the decay process. Drift time of primaryionization charge towards the amplification stagewill provide the third coordinate.Recently, the research team from theInstitute of Nuclear Physics PAN, who specializesin the studies of GDR in hot nuclei at high spins,proposed to develop and build a novel gammacalorimeter, which simultaneously measure thehigh energy gamma rays (3-40 MeV) from theGDR gamma decay as well as the multiplicity,sum energy and low energy gamma-ray spectra.Such a device will partly consist of the existingEuropean detectors, but a significant part of it willbe constructed from the new detectors. To designsuch a novel gamma-ray calorimeter it isnecessary to investigate possibilities which areoffered by recent advances in scintillatortechnology. The project is lead by the Krakówphysicists and gathers researchers from morethan 10 European countries.Last two decades showed that manyprojects in the low energy nuclear physics have tobe pursued within large internationalcollaborations. Polish research teams contribute toall major international collaborations that havebeen created in Europe in that field. For examplePoland is one of the eleven partners in theAdvanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA)project, where our responsibility mainly regardsthe development of the AGATA ancillarydetectors interface (AGAVA) analysis of AGATAperformance in connection to ancillary detectorsand data analysis. Polish institutions contributesignificantly to the Rare ISotope INvestigation(RISING) at GSI that gathers 16 countries - ourcommitment relies on the contribution to therunning cost in amount of 7%. Poland and sixother countries are involved in the ION Catchercollaboration which is aimed at developingtechniques of the effective slowing-down,stopping in a gas cell and extraction of radioactiveions. In this case Polish participants areresponsible for development of a heliumthermalization gas cell and optimization of anion extraction at WIGISOL. CHIMERA is anotherlarge project that involves 7 countries with thePolish participation – it is oriented towardsstudies of the isospin effects and one-body vs.two-body dissipation mechanism in nucleusnucleuscollisions. Many Polish research groupsare looking forward to take part in theconstruction and experiments at the plannedradioactive beam facility SPIRAL2 at GANIL(France) – the letters of intent are being preparedwhich will be followed by signing thememorandum of understanding and later theconsortium agreement. Also a few laboratoriesare interested in contributing to the Facility forLow Antiproton Ion Research (FLAIR) at GSI(Germany) that is a part of the FAIR project.The community of nuclear physicists inPoland, in spite of being so much involved in theinternational collaborations, a large part of itsscientific activity devotes to research at the heavyion cyclotron located at Heavy Ion LaboratoryUW. The cyclotron is a K=160 heavy-ion machinein operation since 1994. It provides beams rangingfrom boron to argon with energies from 2 to 10MeV/amu and intensities up to a few hundredspnA. The beam-on-target time has recentlyreached about 3000 hours/year. Permanent setupsinstalled on the beam lines include: JANOSIK– multidetector system consisting of a largeNaI(Tl) crystal with passive and active shieldsand 32-element multiplicity filter, CUDAC – PINdiodearray particle detection system, WIGISOL –Scandinavian type on-line separator, OSIRIS II – acrystal ball consisting of 12 compton-shieldedHPGe detectors, charged particle 4π mutiplicityfilter (Si-ball), 50-element BGO γ multiplicity filterand sectored HPGe polarimeter, SYRENA - alarge universal scattering chamber and ICARE -recently installed multidetector system for lightcharged particle spectroscopy.In the last months a new initiative hasbeen proposed at Heavy Ion Laboratory of UWaimed at creating a collaboration of various Polishgroups specialized in the studies ofelectromagnetic transition probabilities in nuclei.The idea is to combine the two methods: Coulombexcitation method and Doppler Shift Attenuationand Recoil Distance technique. To this end, aproposal is being prepared to build a newmultidectetcor system EAGLE consisting of GeCompton suppressed spectrometers, BaF2detectors as a multiplicity filter, COULEXchamber with PIN silicon detectors, Si inner ballfor proton and alpha multiplicity, and a few Gepolarimeters. The new instrument will be largelybased on the existing equipment from OSIRIS andCUDAC.The research at the cyclotron has provento be successful in several domains. Outstandingresults came from the investigations of shapecoexistence in nuclei, from Giant DipoleResonance studies, from fusion barrierdistributions experiments. Very valuable resultswere also delivered by investigations of high-spinstate structures (the confirmation of chirality),light nuclei reaction processes and themechanisms of “hot” nuclei decay. Out of theseries of achievements a few were selected formore extended presentation.Recent theoretical and experimental worksattracted attention to a phenomenon of chirality in18