Speaker
Description
Despite giant progresses, nuclear structure physics faces a number of challenges, one of which is the role of clusters configurations in the structure of light and medium mass nuclei and the progressive disappearance with growing A of clusters states in favor of single-particle or collective excitations. The relevance of nuclear molecules has been highlighted in various disconnected experiments and theories, dealing with specific nuclei, but not with a campaign covering the lower part of the nuclear chart in full. A systematic search for the effects of irradiating samples with polarized gamma-rays, giving additional information on nuclear structure, should be made.
The availability of tunable polarized gamma-ray sources, coupled with detectors that might analyze the degree of polarization is essential in this endeavor. I will review a few theoretical motivations to carry on experiments with polarized gamma-rays [1,2] as a push to the development of new and sophisticated ways of production and detection of this important probe. In particular, I will focus on the relevance of polarization in the classification of the discrete symmetries that a molecular configuration might take and the relevance in light nuclei, such as well-bound $^{12}C$, $^{16}O$ or more exotic $^{11}Li$ and $^{11}Be$ nuclei.
This research is supported in part by the INFN specific initiative MONSTRE.
[1] L.Fortunato, “Establishing the geometry of α clusters in $^{12}C$ through patterns of polarized γ rays” Phys. Rev. C, 99, 031302(R) (2019).
[2] L.Fortunato, “How to determine the shape of nuclear molecules with polarized gamma-rays”, SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 035 (2020).
