Research interests,
recent accomplishments, and plans
(Outdated! A new version will come up soon.)
My recent research interests have been concentrated on nuclei far
from stability (neutron and proton halos), nuclear astrophysics,
the structure and reactions of light nuclei, and nuclear parity violation.
I have developed the first realistic microscopic models of the neutron-
and proton halo nuclei He-6 and B-8, respectively. I produced
the first (and still only) result for the beta-delayed deuteron emission
from He-6 in a model, which treats the He-6 initial and alpha+d
final states in a consistent way. I simultaneously reproduced the
static properties of the Li-7, Be-7, Li-8, and B-8 nuclei,
and confirmed in a realistic model that B-8 has a proton halo.
I have studied the Be-7(p,gamma)B-8 reaction, whose low-energy cross
section determines the high-energy solar neutrino flux, in a microscopic
eight-body model and in a potential model, respectively. The discovered
correlation between the Be-7(p,gamma)B-8 astrophysical S factor
and the Be-7 quadrupole moment in the eight-body model, and the
connection between the Coulomb displacement energy and the potential
well geometry in the potential model helped to give tighter constraints
on the low-energy Be-7(p,gamma)B-8 cross section. I also
studied the Li-7(p,gamma_0)Be-8 reaction and off-shell
effects in Be-7(p,gamma)B-8 which have important consequences
for the extrapolation of high-energy Be-7(p,gamma)B-8 experimental
data.
I have developed methods to localize two- and three-body resonances in
nuclei, and applied them to the A=3,4,5,6, and 12 nucleon systems. As
an illustration, I mention one important result: I searched for alpha+N+N
resonances in the A=6 nuclei and did not find any low-lying
1- state. Thus, in one of the most comprehensive models of that
nucleus I showed that the much sought for soft dipole mode does not
exist as a resonance in He-6.
I have studied the parity violating alpha-decay of the Li-6 0+ (3.56
MeV) state and the parity conserving gamma asymmetry in polarized
cold neutron capture on proton. The former work established a theoretical
decay width for the Li-6 state, while the latter one helped the
planning of an experiment at LAMPF, which aims to measure the pionic
weak coupling constant.
The developed methods and ideas shown above can be applied to a variety
of interesting nuclear structure and reaction problems. Currently
I am working on the He-3(He-3,alpha)pp and He-4(He-3,gamma)Be-7 reactions,
wich play important roles in the solar energy- and neutrino-generation. I
am also studying Li-11 in a
three-body model. The aim is to explore the analytic structure of the
homogeneous Faddeev kernel at complex energies, and thus learn about
Li-11 resonances, and especially study the question of the soft
dipole mode. I plan to apply the S matrix and R matrix approaches,
that proved to be very fruitful for He-4, He-5, and Li-5, to
other nuclear resonances.
In the future I plan to work mainly on nuclei far from stability and
nuclear astrophysics. I also have an interest in solar modeling,
neutrino physics, and self-organized systems.
Publications
(Check out the nucl-th preprint archives for the
papers!)