Pristupačnost
Date: Thursday, 29/10/2026
Time: 15:15
Place: F08
Clusters, neutrons and fission: looking inside the atomic nucleus
(Deša Jelavić Malenica - IRB, Zagreb)
Atomic nuclei are made of protons and neutrons, but understanding how these particles arrange themselves is still a challenge. In some light nuclei, protons and neutrons form small groups called clusters. A famous example of a nuclear cluster state is the Hoyle state in ¹²C, which plays an important role in the production of carbon in stars. In other nuclei, additional nucleons can connect these clusters, creating structures that resemble molecules. By comparing mirror nuclei, in which protons and neutrons exchange roles, we can learn more about these unusual structures.
Neutrons are particularly challenging to study because they have no electric charge and can only be detected indirectly, through their interactions with matter. When several neutrons are emitted together, determining their number, energies and directions becomes a difficult reconstruction problem. This limits our understanding of phenomena such as nuclear fission, where a heavy nucleus splits into two fragments and the emitted neutrons carry valuable information about how energy is shared between them and how the nucleus breaks apart. Neutron detection is also crucial for studying exotic systems such as the tetraneutron, a system of four neutrons whose existence was investigated in a landmark experiment at RIKEN in 2022, without directly detecting the four neutrons. Developing better ways to reconstruct neutrons is therefore essential for exploring some of the most unusual forms of nuclear matter.
I will present experiments performed in Catania, GSI and RIKEN, and introduce the new DAENERYS neutron laboratory at the Ruđer Bošković Institute.