Gottfried Münzenberg
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, Germany
Title: Exploring the limits: From halo nuclei to super heavy elements - basic research and new medical applications
Biography
Biography: Gottfried Münzenberg
Abstract
Exploring the limits of the existence of elementary matter is a primary goal of nuclear physics. New species such as halo nuclei
and super heavy elements have been discovered. Experimental methods have been further developed for medical applications
including cancer therapy with heavy ion beams and time-of-flight mass spectrometry for medical diagnostics. This work has been
largely carried out at the GSI Helmholzzentrum für Schwerionenforscheung. Light neutron rich nuclei at the limits of nuclear
binding develop neutron halos. The nuclear core is surrounded by a halo of dilute neutron matter, heavier species develop a neutron
skin. Reaction studies give new insights in nuclear structure. The key instrument for these experiments is the GSI projectile fragment
separator (FRS). With the FRS basic research for cancer therapy with heavy ion beams such as the choice of the therapy beam
and a special PET diagnostics have been made. Super heavy elements (SHE) at the upper end of the periodic table exist only by
shell stabilization. At GSI the new species of deformed shell stabilized SHE has been discovered. The spherical super heavy nucleipredicted for Z=114 are still waiting for discovery though this proton number has already been surpassed with heaviest element
observed, oganesson, with 118 protons. To reach this goal the new generation of SHE factories is under way. Drawbacks of the
existing experiments are the insufficient sensitivity and the identification by decay characteristics. The new SHE factories will
provide more beam intensity for higher sensitivity and direct A, Z identification by isobaric mass measurement with high-resolving
multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometers (MRTOF-MS). These spectrometers have a resolving power of 600,000 and are
also suitable for the analysis of macro molecules or even cell fragments. Such spectrometers are developed at Giessen University.
Experiments for the identification of exotic nuclei created in transfer reactions are under way.