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TIGRESS Has TRIUMFant Startup
Scientists perform first-ever experiment with ‘Hubble telescope of nuclear physics'
BY ANDREW VOWLES
What makes up the stuff of the universe, from the innards of distant stars to the elements inside you? The answers are a step nearer after this summer's successful startup of a multi-million-dollar instrument in Vancouver considered the “Hubble telescope of nuclear physics.”
The most advanced detector of its kind, the TIGRESS (TRIUMF-ISAC gamma ray escape suppressed spectrometer) is housed at TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics research in British Columbia.
Developed by an international group of scientists under the direction of U of G physics professor Carl Svensson, the instrument will help scientists learn how stars cook up the basic elements that make up all matter in the universe.
“All the elements you and I and everything else are made up of at some point were cooked up in the interior of some ancient star,” says Svensson. “To understand the origins of the heavier elements, you have to understand nuclear reactions in these stars.”
Catastrophic events such as X-ray bursts and stellar explosions then spewed out those elements, which eventually cooled and coalesced into planets, moons and other objects. (In our own relatively young sun, the same reactions generate helium from hydrogen, releasing light and heat.)
This summer saw the first-ever experiment performed with TIGRESS at TRIUMF's Isotope Separator and Accelerator Complex (ISAC). “The experiment went so smoothly that it was beyond any of our expectations,” says Svensson.
Now midway through a grant to design and build TIGRESS, the U of G-led consortium of about 70 scientists at 17 institutions across Canada, the United States and Europe will take three more years to complete the project. Major components for this first TIGRESS experiment were also designed and built at the University of Montreal, the University of Rochester and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
“Combined with the most advanced source of exotic nuclei at ISAC, this will provide the world's best environment for advancing our understanding of the creation of matter in the universe,” says TRIUMF science director Jean-Michel Poutissou.
Last spring, TRIUMF commissioned a new superconducting linear accelerator called ISAC-II, which accelerates exotic atoms for studying nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics. TIGRESS will be the main experimental facility at ISAC-II.
Using extremely short-lived isotopes created in the ISAC accelerator, the TIGRESS device will allow researchers to study the kinds of processes believed to occur in stars to produce elements, particularly heavier ones.
Observing how these processes occur — including this summer's first-ever experiment on TIGRESS using a proton-rich form of sodium — will help scientists test theories about events in these stellar crucibles.
The TIGRESS collaboration also studies basic properties of the nuclear forces and interactions between matter and anti-matter.
“What's really driving us is the desire to understand how the universe began and how it currently works,” says Svensson.
He also expects TIGRESS will yield information that will help suppliers improve products from medical diagnostic devices to radiological security monitoring instruments that use similar technology.
Construction of the TIGRESS array has been funded by a six-year capital grant worth $8.06 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). NSERC has also provided operating grants worth a total of $1.89 million. The device incorporates technology developed through an award of $800,000 funded jointly in 2002 by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust, U of G and TRIUMF.