Experiments to investigate phonon-nuclear interactions

This thesis presents a series of experiments conducted by the author between 2016 and 2018 that were designed to test for and investigate a proposed phonon-nuclear coupling interaction and an associated nuclear excitation transfer mechanism. Electric and magnetic interactions of phonons with atomic nuclei have been studied for several decades. However, such second-order interactions are too weak to induce nuclear state changes. Hagelstein and Chaudhary recently identified the possibility of a stronger, first-order phonon-nuclear interaction, based on the boost correction associated with the nucleon-nucleon potential for nuclei embedded in a condensed matter environment. Because the newly proposed interaction follows from the relativistic (Dirac) treatment of nucleons, Hagelstein and Chaudhary refer to this interaction as relativistic phonon-nuclear coupling.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Metzler, Florian.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter L. Hagelstein.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121824

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/121824