Conference in Zakopne

I am going to participate the fourth time now at the International Nuclear Physics Conference in Zakopene (Poland), which has been organized every second year. Conferences, organized by the Polish physical society, are always pretty good due to the Polish hospitality (especially towards the Hungarians) and the high scientific quality. From these the Zakopane Conference is one of the best: the site is located in the middle of the High Tatras... Participants and organizers are neither hiding one of main goal of the conference: hiking at the mountains discovering the beauty of the nature.

At the conference I am going to give a presentation about the topic and the scientific results discussed in my last entry. Before the conference I have lot of questions to myself: who will be there? In which field they are professionals at? Can I give a presentation that can be understood by everyone? Will be any relevant questions, comments, remarks after the talk?

Anyway, the weather seems to be perfect so my hiking boot goes to my bag...

Summertime...

... in our research institute is usually the time for maintenance so a researcher must have a quite long break in his experimental work. This is the time for a little rest, but also for have an overview on the latest publications in the field, and for having a "look" at the data of previous experiments...

Very recently we performed an experiment at the Tandem Accelerator of the Technical University (Munich). In this experiment we measured the fission probability of 238Np as a function of the excitation energy by employing the 237Np(d,pf) reaction. However, the data analysis of this experiment is complicated by the very large level density which originates from the odd-odd nature of this nucleus: it has an odd number of neutrons and protons. Now, I have the time for the careful analysis of the data of this experiment...

Fission probability of 238Np as a function of excitation energy (blue spectrum), and a zoomed spectrum on the individual resonances.