UWC drives the first African-led experiment in physics at CERN
News category: Newnano
About fifteen years ago, as an undergraduate student in Spain, I convinced a few friends of mine to apply for a Summer School at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
With over 15,000 scientists and engineers from all over the world working in unison at revealing the secrets of nature, CERN is probably the most extraordinary research institution in the world. Getting there was a dream.
The only thing that we needed was the consent and signature from a physics professor at the University of Granada in charge of student exchange programs. I sadly remember how the heads of my friends were going slowly down and down as such a gentleman was telling us, as a matter of fact, that “only the crème de la crème, students from MIT, Princeton, Oxford or Cambridge go to these kind of workshops. This is a small university and our students are not prepared for that.” He did not sign the forms. I went to England to do a PhD in experimental nuclear physics.
CERN has recently been the focus of breaking news worldwide with the discovery (still to be confirmed) of the Higgs boson. Not only is the Higgs boson the particle credited with giving others mass, but it might also be responsible for the existence of the mysterious dark energy, which keeps speeding our universe ever faster. CERN’s breakthroughs are built upon the shoulders of a technological giant, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the highest-energy particle collider ever constructed (it goes around the entire city of Geneva in Switzerland) and one of the great engineering milestones of mankind. Other exciting high-energy physics programs at CERN concern the production of quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang and finding clues for dark matter and the potentially missing antimatter. Lots of excitement!
Students from the UWC MANUS program (mainly) together with students from other South African institutions and local and international speakers during the 2012 Tastes of Nuclear Physics held at UWC.
camw9bh9CERN’s scientists do not only use the high-energy protons from the LHC to investigate the Big Bang, the Higgs boson and other high-energy physics, but they also study the physics that addresses the origin of the low energy interactions between nuclei – the strong nuclear force. The physics of interacting nuclei accounts for how the elements were (and are) created through nuclear reactions in explosive stellar scenarios – the physics of exotic materials that may lead to advanced technologies – the physics of how to create a sustainable and safe energy by taming our sun. This is the physics that has consumed, and still is consuming, more man hours than any other scientific question in the history of mankind. This is the physics that the Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Astrophysics Group at the University of the Western Cape is pursuing.
The South Africa – CERN (SA-CERN) collaboration was originally founded in 2008 by visionary researchers from the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand, KwaZulu-Natal and iThemba LABS. The University of the Western Cape joined in the year 2012. Most of the South African physicists are involved in the exciting discoveries going on in high-energy physics and collaborate head-to-head with their international counterparts. Professor Krish Bharuth-Ram from the University of KwaZulu-Natal is the South African pioneer doing material science research at CERN. Bharuth-Ram has developed a world-class research program studying semiconductor-compatible magnetic materials for innovative spintronic applications – an emerging nanoscale technology based in the detection and manipulation of the electron spin – by implanting radioactive beams for a few hours onto metallic oxides and studying their de-exciting properties. The SA-CERN collaboration, supported by Baruth-Ram, funded Orce’s first trip to CERN in 2012.
The 29th of October 2012, Orce crossed the main gates at CERN to defend the first research proposal in low-energy nuclear physics ever led by an African institution. At CERN, a scientific committee of internationally recognized physicists, the INTC, would decide upon the fate of the different research proposals from all over the world. Only institutions involved in Letters of Intent can, in principle, submit and defend research proposals. UWC co-authors two of such. During the same meeting, another research proposal co-led by Dr Mathis Wiedeking at iThemba LABS was defended by researchers at the University of Oslo. This experiment was approved and beam time recommended by the INTC. “The physics case was found interesting and relevant”, but a letter of clarification with a full simulation of the experiment was required before giving UWC the beam time. No leading entry to the dream laboratory was to be easy. In fact, the acceptance of the Oslo-iThemba LABS proposal was a major, and largely unnoticed, breakthrough for South African science and, up to date, these are the only two research proposals in low-energy nuclear physics ever submitted to CERN which include South African institutions. In our proposal, nonetheless, UWC is the leading institution and hence, has the right to assign UWC students to analyze the resulting CERN data, e.g. for their PhD work, and to be the first author/institution in any publications arising from these experiments.
In simple words, our experimental proposal goes into looking at the shape of nuclei with extremely tiny dimensions of a few 10-15metres! where no electron microscope can reach. Particularly, our experimental proposal is about measuring the shape of a very exotic isotope of selenium produced in the explosions of binary star systems composed of a neutron star and a normal giant – this so-called X-ray bursts are the most common explosive phenomena in our Heavens. How this nucleus may change its shape with relatively low excitation energies, from a cigar to a rugby-ball shape or viceversa is not understood and affect the decay properties of nuclei and, hence, the abundance of the elements as we see them around us today. That understanding of how the elements were (and are still) created in stellar explosions is what we are aiming at!
Orce submitted the Letter of Clarification June 30th 2013. The INTC just gave the final verdict.“The results of these simulations and the explanations provided were found to be satisfactory. The experiment is considered sensitive enough and capable of determining the relevant observables.”The first proposal in nuclear physics ever led by an African institution was approved!
Students from the UWC MANUS program (mainly) together with students from other South African institutions and local and international speakers during the 2012 Tastes of Nuclear Physics held at UWC.
It cannot be forgotten, however, that the physics remains to be done. UWC has however been preparing this particular goal since the beginnings of the MANuS/MstSci honours/masters program in 2008, where the honours students in the MANuS (Masters in Accelerator and Nuclear Science) program are instructed in the physics of nuclear reactions and excitations as well as in nuclear experimental techniques needed to succeed at carrying out experiments such as the ones UWC proposes at CERN. Similar experiments have been proposed and approved by UWC to yet another scientific committee at iThemba LABS and the first one of this kind will run this early November 2013. Others will follow. In May 2013, Orce’s MSc students Nontobeko Khumalo and Nicholas Erasmus already attended a workshop on Measurements and Statistics at CERN. International collaborators are also coming to lecture our students during local conferences such as the popular Tastes of Nuclear Physics. New PhD and postdoctoral students are joining the group. The first SarChi Chair in Nuclear Science, Professor Smarajit Triambak, will arrive this September 2013 to strengthen the group. For years, UWC has meticulously worked together – naming a few key players, Professors Robbie Lindsay, Reginaldt Madjoe, John Scharpey-Schafer and Ramash Baruth-Ram, the Physics staff and faculty, the UWC Deputy Vice Chancellor’s office and many others – towards achieving scientific greatness. Other South African and International institutions – e.g. we cannot forget the titanic efforts from researchers at iThemba LABS and our MANUS/MAtSci partners at the University of Zululand – have also supported this enterprise. We shall be prepared when the time comes. The UWC experiment will run sometime in 2016 due to unforeseen emergency activities at the LHC during the long shutdown. It is surely the time to join the nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics group at UWC.
About fifteen years later, we have provided South African students with the keys to unlock the mysteries of Heavens. The same keys that will open the gates of the most famous scientific laboratory in the world, that will allow you to propose your own experiments and lead nuclear physics experiments at iThemba LABS and CERN. You just need cross the gates, but once in, give everything you have. Our students will gain self confidence and initiative by realizing that there is not much difference between what we do here and what we do at CERN. We shall bring the expertise to the new rare beam facility at iThemba LABS. The final goal is to bring the keys of Heavens to your own home, here, in Africa.
Writer: Nico Orce