Quantum Curveball: Established theory challenged by surprising atomic nucleus shape change
Baku, August 21, AZERTAC
New Oak Ridge National Laboratory study reveals an unforeseen atomic nucleus shape change, using data from FRIB to explore the long-lasting excited state of sodium-32, challenging nuclear shape and energy correlations, according to SciTechDaily.
New research may have revealed an unexpected change in the shape of an atomic nucleus. The surprise finding could affect our understanding of what holds nuclei together, how protons and neutrons interact, and how elements form. The study was led by Timothy Gray of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“We used radioactive beams of excited sodium-32 nuclei to test our understanding of nuclear shapes far from stability and found an unexpected result that raises questions about how nuclear shapes evolve,” said Gray, a nuclear physicist. The results were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Over time the shapes and energies of atomic nuclei can shift between different configurations. Typically, nuclei live as quantum entities that have either spherical or deformed shapes. The former look like basketballs, and the latter resemble American footballs.
How shapes and energy levels relate is a major open question for the scientific community. Nuclear structure models have trouble extrapolating to regions with little experimental data.
For some exotic radioactive nuclei, the shapes predicted by traditional models are the opposite of those observed. Radioactive nuclei that were expected to be spherical in their ground states, or lowest-energy configurations, turned out to be deformed.
