30 Years of the Heavy Ion Laboratory in the ‘Nuclear Physics News’

A comprehensive article presenting the Heavy Ion Laboratory (HIL) at the University of Warsaw has just been published in the “Nuclear Physics News”. The article highlights the Laboratory’s current achievements, reflecting more than 30 years of history and development. It also refers back to the announcement of the facility’s inauguration published in the same journal in May 1994, when the first external beam was extracted from the Warsaw Cyclotron.
The article describes a series of upgrades implemented over the years, including the replacement of the original ion source and improvements to the radiofrequency and beam-focusing systems. It also presents the Laboratory’s key spectrometers and experimental facilities, highlighting the main areas of activity of the Warsaw Cyclotron:
– Nuclear structure research
– Nuclear medicine and radiobiology
– International collaboration
– Education and training
Nuclear Physics News is a quarterly journal published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC). It serves as a major platform for communication and collaboration within the international nuclear physics community, highlighting groundbreaking research projects, developments in experimental facilities, and scientific policy in the field. The journal’s digital edition is available online through the publisher’s platform.
Link to the article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10619127.2026.2694952
Link to the announcement on the University of Warsaw website:
https://www.uw.edu.pl/nuclear-physics-news-o-jubileuszu-30-lat-slcj-uw/

Seminar of Ernest Grodner at the Warsaw University of Technology

We would like to invite you to a seminar that will take place on Thursday, April 30 at 12:15 in room 111 of the Physics Building of the Warsaw University of Technology. 

During the seminar, Dr hab. Ernest Grodner from the  National Centre for Nuclear Research will give a talk entitled “Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in atomic nuclei. 2026-2027: a time of new research opportunities”.

The seminar will be held in English.

Abstract:

The term “chirality” is used in a wide range of phenomena in various fields of science. Generally, it means a possibility of a system or object to exist in two equivalent forms: left- or right-handed one. Chemical molecules – enantiomers- with mirror geometric form are a well known example. Chirality is often associated with the concept of helicity: in optics these are circularly polarized photons or in the theory of weak interactions the handedness of the weak current serves as an example. The link between the two opposite handedness is a geometric transformation: spatial inversion. Nuclear chirality, the subject of this lecture, is of a different nature. Here, the time reversal is the link between the right-handed and left-handed forms. Thus an existence of a specific dynamics, a kind of “clockwork mechanism,” instead of static geometry plays a key role here.

Initially, studies of nuclear chirality involved a few specific isotopes. A breakthrough came with the first experimental observation of the complete set of predicted chiral features in a nucleus [1,2], as a result of research work conducted 20 years ago in Warsaw. Then a new technique allowed the direct measurement of nuclear chirality using nuclear magnetic dipole moment as an observable [3]. This technique was also developed in Warsaw and today is considered an ultimate experimental test for nuclear chirality. Application of new experimental methods may bring another breakthrough thanks to cooperation between the National Center for Nuclear Research and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Magnetic moments measurement of short-lived excited states are planned utilizing a kilo-Tesla magnetic field originating from atomic electronic shells.

[1] E. Grodner et al., “128Cs as the Best Example Revealing Chiral Symmetry Breaking”, Physical Review Letters 97, 172501 (2006)

[2] E. Grodner et al., “Partner bands of 126 Cs – first observation of chiral electromagnetic selection rules”, Physics Letters B703, 46(2011)

[3] E. Grodner et al., “First Measurement of the g Factor in the Chiral Band: The Case of the 128Cs, Isomeric State”, Physical Review Letters 120, 022502 (2018)

Deformation of 110Cd in its ground and excited 0+ states

Since the 1950’s, the nuclear science community has largely accepted the work of A. Bohr and B. Mottelson, for which they received the Nobel Prize in 1975, that the lowest excitations that occur in the nucleus arise from collective behaviour. One can explain the principle of collective nuclear excitations in analogy to the motions of fans in a football stadium; each of them may stand up and run around – like individual protons and neutrons that can be promoted from one orbital to the next – but they can also participate in a “wave” that propagates around the stadium, which is a collective phenomenon. In the atomic nucleus, the collective excitations may be rotations or vibrations that involve multiple particles in the nucleus, or even the majority of them.

For over 40 years, cadmium isotopes have played a key role in the study of the collective behaviour in atomic nuclei. Initially, it was believed that their structures could be described within a collective vibrational model, in which the surface of the nucleus oscillates (vibrates) around a spherical equilibrium shape. Subsequent experimental results inspired new calculations using advanced theoretical models of atomic nuclear structure, which predict that the individual excited states in 110Cd and 112Cd nuclei adopt various ellipsoidal shapes (for example, elongated like a rugby ball or zucchini, or flattened like a Frisbee or a pumpkin). In parallel, alternative theoretical approaches were developed, that are able to reconcile the existing experimental data on these nuclei with their quasi-spherical shapes.

Recent experiments conducted at the Heavy Ion Laboratory UW made it possible to discriminate between these two fundamentally different interpretations of the structure of cadmium nuclei by determining the shapes of two key states in the 110Cd nucleus. Both the ground state and the excited 0+ state deviate from a spherical shape, with the former, in particular, resembling a kiwifruit (or an ellipsoid with all axes having different lengths). Furthermore, the measured quadrupole moments (i.e., charge distribution parameters) of the lowest two spin-2 states are significantly different from zero, ruling out the hypothesis that the structure of these nuclei could result from their vibrations around a spherical shape. These findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Physics Letters B.

The new results on 110Cd  are part of a broad international research programme aimed at determining the shapes of the low-excited 0+ states in even-even cadmium nuclei, using a variety of complementary experimental techniques and the most advanced detection systems. Within this programme, Iwona Piętka is preparing a PhD thesis based on experimental data collected with the state-of-the-art gamma-ray spectrometer AGATA. The work is carried out at the Heavy Ion Laboratory UW, within the Doctoral School of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Warsaw, under supervision of dr Katarzyna Wrzosek-Lipska i dr hab. Leszek Próchniak.

K. Wrzosek-Lipska, I.Z. Piętka, L. Próchniak, P.E. Garrett, M. Zielińska, T. Abraham, J.M. Allmond, F.L. Bello Garrote, H. Bidaman, V. Bildstein, S. Buck, C. Burbadge, M. Chiari, R. Coleman, G. Colombi, G. Colucci, A. Diaz Varela, D.T. Doherty, S. Dutt, B. Greaves, K. Hadyńska-Klęk, J. Heery, M. Hlebowicz, D. Hymers, J. Iwanicki, G. Jaworski, B. Jigmeddorj, D. Kalaydjieva, M. Kisieliński, M. Komorowska, N. Kopeć, M. Kowalczyk, J. Kowalska, K. Krutul-Bitowska, R. Kumar, A. Mai Quynh, N. Marchini, T. Marchlewski, K.R. Mashtakov, M. Matejska-Minda, C. Michelagnoli, A. Nannini, P.J. Napiorkowski, B. Olaizola, F. Oleszczuk, M. Palacz, E. Pasquali, E.E. Peters, M. Rocchini, E. Sahin, J. Samorajczyk-Pyśk, M. Saxena, A. Stolarz, J. Srebrny, A. Tucholski, A. Trzcińska, M. Venhart, J.L. Wood, S.W. Yates, T. Lidar

Deformation of the 0+1,2 states in 110Cd from low-energy Coulomb excitation,
Physics Letters B, Volume 875, 2026, 140315, ISSN 0370-2693,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2026.140315.

The experimental team during measurements at the HIL.

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