In this issue:
- Director’s Corner
- ALICE-USA Analysis Facility
- Towards the Discovery of New Elements: Production of Livermorium (Z=116) with 50Ti
- IDEA-Related Efforts & Resources in the Division
- Fragments
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Director’s Corner
October 2024
Since our last NSD newsletter, there have been a number of notable developments. A major breakthrough in our heavy element program was achieved and published, with the first production of a superheavy element, Livermorium (Z=116), using a 50Ti beam. The announcement drew significant attention at the summer conferences and the broader press. Find out more in this issue about how this achievement opens the door to search for Element 120. This issue of the NSD newsletter also features the efforts in establishing a new LHC Analysis Facility for the ALICE experiment at LBNL, an important contribution to the ALICE activities in the U.S.
We were also able to celebrate the DOE Early Career Award for Jennifer Pore, and the 3rd place finish of Lisa Schlueter in the Berkeley Lab Slam. Congratulations to Jenn and Lisa. Unfortunately, we also received the very sad news that Frank Stephens, a giant in the field of Nuclear Structure, passed away at age 93 in August. He will be greatly missed.
This issue also features a summary of the activity of the NSD IDEA Council and resources available for those interested in advancing the IDEA culture within the Division and the broader community. The NSD IDEA Council is always looking for additional volunteers. We are also looking forward to hosting many Scouts at the Lab on November 9, when the Lab will host the 12th Annual Nuclear Science Day for Scouts.
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Towards the Discovery of New Elements: Production of Livermorium (Z=116) with 50Ti
Is there an end to the periodic table? How many protons and neutrons can fit into a nucleus? What is the heaviest element that can exist? Is there an ‘island of stability’, where superheavy elements have unique properties and long lifetimes? The quest to discover new elements not only looks towards answering these questions, but also pushes the boundaries of our understanding of atomic structure, stability, and the forces that hold matter together. Currently, there are 118 elements known, of which 90 exist naturally on Earth. Elements heavier than fermium (100 protons) are made by combining the nuclei of two lighter elements, but not just any combination works. The five heaviest known elements today were produced by combining nuclei of a special isotope of calcium (20 protons and 28 neutrons) with actinide element nuclei. Unfortunately, this method only works up to element 118 (Oganesson). To go beyond, scientists must find a new reaction mechanism.
In a paper recently accepted to Physical Review Letters, The Heavy Element Group at Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division made a significant breakthrough. Using a beam of titanium-50 (22 protons, 28 neutrons) accelerated in the 88-Inch Cyclotron, the team successfully produced two atoms of the superheavy element Livermorium (element 116) in 22 days. This experiment marks a key step towards creating element 120 which is expected to be 10-20 times harder to make than Livermorium. If successfully made, element 120 would be the heaviest known element, occupying the eighth row of the periodic table, and edging closer to the “island of stability”. Exploring elements at the extremes can provide insights into how atoms behave, test models of nuclear physics, and map out the limits of atomic nuclei.
This work was led by Jacklyn Gates and Rodney Orford of the Nuclear Science Division’s Heavy Element Group. The collaboration includes researchers from Berkeley Lab, Lund University, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, San José State University, University of Strasbourg, University of Liverpool, Oregon State University, Texas A&M University, UC Berkeley, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Manchester, ETH Zürich, and the Paul Scherrer Institute.
Figure 1: Observed decays of 290Lv and its daughters (left) compared to the known decay properties of 290Lv (right)
Figure 2: An expanded periodic table shows where researchers expect elements 119 and 120 to be categorized if they are discovered. Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
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ALICE-USA Analysis Facility
A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) studies fundamental properties of the nuclear matter produced by the high energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. At the core of this research lies the collection of immense amounts of data for analysis. This data goes through a meticulous and very compute intensive process from the detector to the analysis ready physics object. Along with ALICE, three other LHC experiments, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb, conduct experiments, collect data, run extensive computations, and analyze the output for the physics research.
Computing for the LHC experiments is organized under the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) collaboration. WLCG has adopted the tiered approach to the data processing and storing, where Tier-0 centers for the experiments are located at CERN next to each detector. Tier-1 centers reconstruct and host the raw data, and Tier-2 centers run simulation and data analysis, store analysis ready datasets and are distributed around the globe. However, it has become apparent that a new kind of computing facility will be beneficial for accelerating the data calibration, analysis tuning, and final physics analysis process. This is mainly due to the fact that physics simulation and physics data analysis jobs have a very different payload profile when it comes to computing. Such Analysis Facilities (AF) will be optimized towards the I/O intensive data analysis jobs and host the fraction of the datasets on which analysis can be tuned with a quick turnover.
ALICE introduced the idea of AFs in its 2015 TDR. It envisioned staging of about 10 PBs of the analysis ready data distributed worldwide across AFs. The analysis jobs will run on 10 PB of data daily that will then be replaced with another subset of similar capacity. Starting in 2018 such AFs started emerging at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany, and Wigner Center, Hungary.
Recently, WLCG started to evaluate the importance and effectiveness of such AFs for all LHC experiments and they see the need and benefit as well. ALICE on the other hand is leading this process.
On September 9, 2023, almost exactly one year ago, the ALICE-USA Computing Project, which operates two ALICE T2 sites to fulfill US computing obligations on behalf of the 11 US institutions participating in the experiment, deployed the first US hosted AF at LBL. With this deployment, we demonstrated the ability to operate such a facility with extremely high availability and reliability. With the prototype in place as a proof of concept and operating effectively without any downtime we plan to grow this resource to the full scale AF. It will enable US scientists to host, control, and have access to one of the largest analysis ready Heavy Ion datasets collected.
The ALICE-USA Computing Project is a collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The project is managed by NSD’s Irakli Chakaberia. The LBNL site administration is performed by John White and Karen Fernsler from the LBNL ITD group.
Figure 1: CPU capacity delivered to the ALICE experiment by the new AF.
Figure 2: Share of a different workload on the new AF since its deployment.
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Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability Moments
IDEA-Related Efforts & Resources in the Division
At a recent all-staff meeting, Tom Gallant from NSD’s IDEA Council summarized the many IDEA-related resources, groups, and activities that anyone in the division can participate in. He also reminded everyone about the purpose and makeup of the IDEA Council, an all-volunteer team from NSD who help people in the division engage in IDEA activities and connect and coordinate NSD efforts with the rest of the Physical Sciences Area and the lab.
One of the Council’s ongoing initiatives is the Luminary Card program, a system for peer-to-peer recognition of actions and efforts that support an inclusive, diverse and equitable workplace climate in NSD. Anyone (everyone!) in NSD can give a Luminary card (available in physical and virtual flavors) to a colleague within NSD or the broader research community. Please visit the website to learn more.
For those who are looking to hire, since 2021 NSDhas made specific funding available to cover the cost of posting jobs on underrepresented minority-targeted job posting boards. NSD’s partners in HR can help you access these funds. All hiring managers should be aware of these resources and understand that it is expected to post your positions to attract a diverse applicant pool. Remember though that while we work to identify and mitigate as many barriers as possible, we need to be cognizant of our own implicit biases and how they can adversely affect an applicant’s chances of success.
Another resource for NSD folks is the Physical Science Workplace Life Committee. They are a committee of representatives from across the Physical Sciences area that works to explore and address issues affecting workplace quality of life. They address challenging topics such as childcare for LBNL employees, work-life balance, promotion guidelines and many, many more. The current members from NSD are the PSWLC chair Brian Quiter, and Dan Kasen. Topics can be raised by talking with Brian and/or Dan or via their online form.
The Employee Resource Groups at LBNL are groups of employees who join together based on shared characteristics or life experiences to provide fellowships, friendship and support, enhance career and personal development, and contribute to the organization’s vision and goals. ERGs promote diversity and equity by raising awareness and ensuring that group members have a voice in the organization. Anyone can join an ERG, even if their identity does not match the focus of the group.
There are also many other ways that individual staff within NSD engage in education and outreach programs, including through the K-12 STEM Education programs and LBNL volunteer portal. As a division NSD leads in the area of volunteering!
And just a final reminder that if you have any IDEA-related suggestions, opportunities, or other issues, the IDEA Council is here to help. We can always be reached at NSD-IDEA-Council@lbl.gov.
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Fragments
Jennifer Pore, a Research Scientist in the Low Energy Nuclear Physics Program, was selected to receive funding through the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program. Dr. Pore’s project, “Investigating the Fundamental Properties of the Heaviest Elements,” will be at the intersection of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry and utilize LBNL’s Berkeley Gas-Filled Separator (BGS) and FIONA devices to study the physical and chemical properties of Superheavy Elements. Funding for the five year award will be jointly provided by the DOE Office of Science Nuclear Physics and Basic Energy Sciences programs. Further details can be found here.
Lisa Schlueter, a Postdoc in NSD’s Neutrinos Program, won third place in the LBNL Research SLAM for her three-minute presentation, “Why our universe shouldn’t exist”. Lisa will advance to the regional Bay Area SLAM on October 3 to compete against the finalists from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia National Labs, and SLAC National Lab. Congratulations and good luck, Lisa!
Florian Jones, a Postdoc in NSD’s Relativistic Nuclear Collisions Program, received an ALICE 20204 thesis award for his dissertation “Probing the initial state of heavy-ion collisions with isolated prompt photons“. Florian received his PhD from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. His graduate career included a significant stay at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Congratulations also to graduating PhD student Ezra Lesser, from UC Berkeley, for his ALICE 2024 thesis award for his dissertation “”Measurements of jet substructure in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at ⎷sNN = 5.02 TeV with ALICE”. These studies reported in two publications were developed with RNC scientists. The results in pp are already published in JHEP and the publication on results in Pb-Pb collisions is in the final stages of approval and will be released over the summer. Photographs of the July 9th presentation ceremony and the full list of award winners are available at https://alice-collaboration.web.cern.ch/Thesis_award2024
Brian Quiter and Jayson Vavrek from NSD’s Applied Nuclear Physics Program celebrated service awards. Brian marked 15 years with LBNL, while Jayson marked 5 years.
Zhengwei Xue was hired as a Scientific Engineering Associate in the RNC Program. Joanna Szornel was promoted to Research Scientist in the Applied Nuclear Physics Program. Welcome, Zhengwei and congratulations to Joanna!
NSD received several new funding awards including one from the United States Nuclear Data Program (USNDP) to train the next generation of nuclear data evaluators, and a number of new projects supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration Office for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development.
It is with deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of Frank Stephens on Sunday, August 18, 2024. Frank will be remembered for the enormous impact on the field of Low Energy Nuclear Physics. He started at Berkeley Lab as a Research Chemist in 1955, became a Senior Scientist two years into his career at the Lab, and was appointed as a Distinguished Scientist in 1995 before retiring from a career with many highlights in 1997. Frank was an inspiration to those he worked with. He will be greatly missed. An obituary and further information can be found here.
