The first meeting of the Dissertation Council on Heavy-Ion Physics chaired by Professor M. G. Itkis was held on 29 January 2021 at 15:30 PM in a mixed format: in-person in the Conference Hall of FLNR and online.

The defence of the dissertation by Pavel Germanovich Sharov, titled “Study of energy spectra of exotic nuclei ¹⁰He and ¹⁷Ne”, was held in the presence of more than half of the Council members (12 out of 22). The thesis was submitted for attaining the degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in the specialty 01.04.16 – Physics of Elementary Particles and Atomic Nuclei. The work was highly appreciated by the official opponents Professor N. Burtebaev (INP, NNC, Almaty) and Professor Yu. M. Chuvilsky (SINP, MSU, Moscow).

This unique work presenting both theoretical and experimental studies and written under the guidance of RAS Corresponding Member Professor L. V. Grigorenko and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics A. S. Fomichev marked significant development in nuclear physics research with radioactive beams in FLNR JINR.

During dissertation defense

During the discussion of thesis materials, the developed theoretical approaches and methods for the analysis of experimental data were noted to be highly relevant. Moreover, they are building a solid base for further investigations of the entire series of exotic nuclei at a qualitatively new level in experiments at the ACCULINNA-2 fragment separator. In particular, it was noted that super exotic systems near the borders of nuclear stability, such as ⁶Н, ⁷H, ¹⁰He, ¹³Li, ¹⁶Be, ⁷С, ⁸С, ¹¹O, ¹²О, ¹⁵Ne, ¹⁷Ne, etc., could be efficiently studied in nuclear reactions at a radioactive beam energy in the range 25–35 MeV per nucleon using cutting-edge equipment (cryogenic targets for helium and hydrogen isotopes, including tritium; magnetic spectrometer; precision detection equipment).

After the successful defense of the dissertation, the discussion of plans for investigations at ACCULINNA-2 continued in the office of the FLNR Director S. I. Sidorchuk. Particular attention was given to the preparation for experiments with quasi-elastic reactions (p,2p) and (α,2α) having fairly high cross sections at the 8Не or 11Li beam energy of about 30 MeV/nucleon. These reactions are quite promising for studying the 7Н neutron-rich system. With a view to optimizing the experimental set-up, the decision was made to perform Monte Carlo modelling under the supervision of the new recipient of Candidate of Physics and Mathematics degree Pavel Sharov.

The thesis defense demonstrated a high level of preparation of young specialists in the ACCULINNA group and gave a strong incentive to continue working in this field. Sergey Krupko, Andrey Bezbakh and Ivan Muzalevsky are on the short “waiting list”. The first meeting of the Dissertation Council on Heavy-Ion Physics is a good example of strengthening the research capacity of JINR.

Head of Sector of Light Exotic Nuclei A. S. Fomichev