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Unlike normal atomic nuclei, little is known about so-called hypernuclei, which belong to the category of ‘strange matter’. Nuclear physicist Alexandre Obertelli from TU Darmstadt wants to change that. His project, ‘When antimatter meets strangeness: a new era for precision hypernuclear physics’ (HYPER), is now being funded by the European Research Council (ERC) for five years with an Advanced Grant totalling €2.9 million.
‘I would like to congratulate Professor Alexandre Obertelli on being awarded an ERC Advanced Grant,’ said TU President Professor Tanja Brühl. ‘This renewed distinction is impressive proof that Alexandre Obertelli – who joined our university community as an Alexander von Humboldt Professor –is making groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the universe and its fundamental components. He is a visionary pioneer in the field of nuclear physics who is confidently breaking new ground. With his internationally recognized research, he is helping to decipher and understand as yet unexplored phenomena surrounding atomic nuclei.’
Most of the visible, elementary (so-called hadronic) matter in the universe consists of the lightest building blocks, the up and down quarks. However, there are also heavier quarks, such as the strange quark, which could play an important role in very dense nuclear matter, for example inside neutron stars. Although such particles do not occur naturally on Earth, they can be produced and studied in the laboratory.
Particles from the baryon family – which also includes protons and neutrons, which contain at least one strange quark – are called hyperons. Hyperons exist only for a very short time (about 200 trillionths of a second) before they decay, but long enough to bind to normal atomic nuclei and form so-called hypernuclei.
Little is known about the interaction of hyperons with protons and neutrons, as there is hardly any precise measurement data available. The ‘HYPER’ research project now aims to change this with a new approach: the scientists want to create hypernuclei using antiprotons – the antiparticles of protons.
The interaction of an antiproton with an atomic nucleus releases the energy needed to create hyperons within the nucleus, thus producing hypernuclei. With this novel technique, Obertelli and his team want to explore a hitherto little-studied area of nuclear physics: the ‘strange’ side of atomic nuclei. In particular, the hypernuclei will be studied spectroscopically and their ground state energy determined. To this end, the researchers want to analyse hypernuclei with different numbers of neutrons (known as isotopes) to learn more about the interaction of hyperons with neutrons – which could influence our understanding of neutron stars.
The focus of ‘HYPER’ is the development of a new detector that can precisely measure the decay products of hypernuclei. This will be used at the Antimatter Factory of the European particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva. If successful, the project could lay the foundation for a ‘hypernucleus factory’ in Europe.
‘HYPER’ is being developed in close collaboration with Professor Laura Fabbietti from the Technical University of Munich (as part of the funding), Dr Piotr Gasik and colleagues from GSI/FAIR, Professor Meytal Duer from the Technical University of Darmstadt, and the ALICE and PUMA collaborations at CERN. The project also benefits from close collaboration with theorists at the Institute for Nuclear Physics (IKP) at TU Darmstadt.
About
Professor Alexandre Obertelli has been conducting research at TU Darmstadt since 2017, where he took up an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in October 2018. Born in France, he previously worked at the Institute for Fundamental Physics (IRFU) at CEA Saclay. His research includes experiments at world-leading accelerator facilities such as the FAIR facility for antiproton and ion research in Darmstadt, CERN in Switzerland and the RIBF facility at the RIKEN Institute in Japan.
Obertelli has already been awarded an ERC Starting Grant and an ERC Consolidator Grant. He is the managing director of the Institute for Nuclear Physics (IKP) at TU Darmstadt.
ERC Advanced Grants
ERC Advanced Grants are awarded to researchers in all scientific fields by the European Research Council. The target group for ERC Advanced Grants are established, active researchers who have a track-record of exceptional research achievements. A total of 281 grants were awarded and 2.534 applications were submitted in the latest round of funding.
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