Greg Willmott
About
My research project
Exploring Unphysical Quadrupole Triaxiality in 200,202Hg with Coulomb ExcitationCoulomb excitation is an ideal experimental probe of nuclear structure and shape phenomena owing to the well understood interaction between collision partners and the relatively large reaction cross sections. During my PhD project I will be analysing data taken at Argonne National Laboratory, IL, US with the Gammasphere high-purity germanium detector array. The aim is to address an anomaly in the previous Coulomb excitation data for these nuclei. The spectroscopic quadrupole moment (Qs) of these nuclei is too big in comparison to the reduced transition probability (B(E2; 0+1 -> 2+1)) which makes these nuclei incompatible with the well established rigid rotor model. The decades of development in gamma ray spectroscopy equipment will allow us to resolve this issue, or conclude that these Hg isotopes are undergoing a more exotic deformation, such as triaxial.
Supervisors
Coulomb excitation is an ideal experimental probe of nuclear structure and shape phenomena owing to the well understood interaction between collision partners and the relatively large reaction cross sections. During my PhD project I will be analysing data taken at Argonne National Laboratory, IL, US with the Gammasphere high-purity germanium detector array. The aim is to address an anomaly in the previous Coulomb excitation data for these nuclei. The spectroscopic quadrupole moment (Qs) of these nuclei is too big in comparison to the reduced transition probability (B(E2; 0+1 -> 2+1)) which makes these nuclei incompatible with the well established rigid rotor model. The decades of development in gamma ray spectroscopy equipment will allow us to resolve this issue, or conclude that these Hg isotopes are undergoing a more exotic deformation, such as triaxial.