Seminarium Fizyki Jądra Atomowego

An active-target Time Projection Chamber (TPC) with electronic readout has been developed at the University of Warsaw to investigate the photo-disintegration reactions relevant for nuclear astrophysics and for studies of nuclear structure phenomena, e.g. alpha-clustering effects in light nuclei.Recently, the performance of the detector was tested in experiments conducted at the Van de Graaf accelerator at the IFJ PAN in Cracow, Poland. There, a 13MeV gamma beam produced in the 15N(p, γ)16O reaction was interacting with the CO2 gas in the TPC. Events corresponding to the 16O(γ, α)12C reaction were clearly observed. At the IGN-14 MeV neutron source at the IFJ PAN, the 12C(n, n’) reaction was investigated with the goal to observe population and 3-alpha decay of the Hoyle state in 12C. During the seminar the TPC detector will described, first results of measurements will be presented and an outlook for future studies will be discussed.