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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States 2 Key Science Drivers for a Rare-Isotope Beam Facility Chapter 1 presented a quick tour of nuclear physics, but more importantly it characterized the roots of some of the intellectual and technological drivers toward the future. This chapter explores the present-day investigations that would most directly be impacted by a facility for rare-isotope beams (FRIB)— and therefore would also most likely set the minimum performance requirements. THE SCIENCE DRIVERS A facility capable of producing intense beams of a wide variety of radioactive nuclei would clearly impact many areas of science and technology. This chapter presents the committee’s view of the principal scientific drivers in nuclear structure physics, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental symmetries, and some important technical applications. However, it is often the case with new world-class facilities that their most important scientific discoveries are not foreseen. The science drivers are briefly presented below, and each is then discussed in a more expanded presentation.1 A facility capable of executing the indicated research is referred to here as a FRIB. 1The Glossary in Appendix D provides additional discussion of key scientific terms.
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States Nuclear Structure Testing new nuclear structure concepts. A quantitative understanding of nuclear structure is important to problems ranging from the origin of the elements to the use of nuclei as laboratories for probing new interactions. The nuclear many-body problem—strongly interacting, with two kinds of particles (protons and neutrons), and with competing effects due to short-range multiple scattering and long-range collectivity—is also of broad intrinsic interest. The phenomena that arise—shell structure, pairing, superfluidity, collective motion and its connections with many-body symmetries, and spectral transitions from order to chaos—and the methods that nuclear physicists employ are also fundamental to fields such as atomic and condensed-matter physics and quantum chemistry. Nuclear structure theory has made significant progress in recent years by adapting numerical techniques for high-performance computing and through conceptual advances such as effective field theory and improved density functionals. However, the reexamination of old paradigms and subsequent development and validation of new nuclear models require data. This is a role for a FRIB: to test the predictive power of models by extending experiments to new regions of mass and proton-to-neutron ratio and to identify new phenomena that will challenge existing many-body theory. A FRIB’s rare-isotope beams of unprecedented intensity and its sophisticated detector arrays would allow experimentalists to explore the limits of nuclear stability. A FRIB’s technological developments would allow nuclear physicists, for the first time, to study nuclei that previously could be found only in the billion-degree explosions of distant supernovae. Production and properties of superheavy nuclei. Theory predicts that super-heavy nuclei that do not exist anywhere else in the universe can be assembled. The nuclei would contain in excess of 120 protons; hence their stored Coulomb energy would be huge. However, with a large number of excess neutrons and an appropriate geometry, the attractive nuclear force could allow such a unique system to exist for times exceeding a day. The synthesis of such nuclei and their proper identification constitute an experimental challenge, but an advanced exotic-beam facility such as a FRIB is required if any meaningful search is to be carried out. These superheavy systems will provide great insight into the nuclear reactions and structure and, if they possess sufficient lifetimes, may reveal unusual chemical properties. Probing neutron skins. Very-neutron-rich nuclei that can be reached by a FRIB offer the only laboratory access to matter made of pure neutrons. The
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States outer layer of those exotic nuclei consists of a neutron skin, which dramatically impacts their structure, reactions, and decays. Neutron skins can result in novel collective modes. Vibrations with respect to the inner proton-neutron core, for example, can impact neutron-capture rates, which are key to the astrophysical rapid neutron-capture process (r-process). With an improved understanding of strongly interacting matter in finite nuclei with large neutron excesses, scientists will be better equipped to model neutron stars: giant reservoirs of neutron matter. Nuclear Astrophysics The origin of the heaviest elements. At the extreme temperatures and pressures of fiery stellar explosions, new elements are forged by enormous fluxes of free neutrons (the r-process), energetic protons (the rapid proton-capture process, or rp-process), and gamma rays (the gamma process, historically referred to as the p-process). On timescales of seconds and less, these fluxes drive the original element abundance to the neutron or proton drip lines where even the most basic nuclear properties—binding energy and half-life—are, for the most part, unknown. Yet more than half of the elements in nature—mostly the ones heavier than iron—have been created this way. These same nuclear processes also power stellar thermonuclear explosions observed as classical novae and Type I x-ray bursts. They also provide the signatures for the diagnostics of core-collapse super-nova explosions. The measurement of the properties of these exotic short-lived nuclei in the pathway of these “extreme” processes therefore provides the key to a better understanding of nucleosynthesis and the conditions, timescales, and mechanism of stellar explosions. Explosive nucleosynthesis. For nuclei in the iron group and lighter, nucleosynthesis also frequently proceeds through exotic parent nuclei. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were produced by many generations of supernovae occurring since the big bang, in which these elements were originally formed as radioactive nickel and, in part, as radioactive titanium. Only about 10 percent of the isotopes in a typical modern calculation of explosive nucleosynthesis are stable. The rates for most of the key reactions are estimates based on uncertain extrapolation of theory. An exotic-beam facility would be able to measure many of the most critical rates and constrain the theoretical prediction of the rest. Composition of neutron stars. There are roughly a billion neutron stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, yet their internal structure and the composition of their crusts are poorly understood. Produced by the explosive deaths of
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States variety of radioisotopes. At the present time, each of these areas would be significantly advanced by a facility with high isotope production rates capable of producing high specific-activity (pure) samples for experimental use. In addition, the parallel advances in low-energy nuclear theory driven by a properly organized FRIB experimental program would provide better models for needed nuclear reactions in areas now beyond direct experimental reach. In the case of stockpile stewardship, the complex nuclear reaction networks needed for understanding device performance would be greatly clarified. Many materials science applications typically require high-purity radioactive isotopes for implantation to diagnose subtle but important phenomena at the few-atom level. Here, the growing demand, the relatively short half-lives, and the required purity of the desired range of isotopes argue strongly for a new high-production-rate facility. Similarly, medical applications, such as the development of new alpha-and beta-emitter tagged antibodies that target and destroy cancer cells, have unmet requirements for high isotope production rates. Lastly, in the reexamination of the nuclear fuel cycle as part of the “global nuclear energy partnership,” improved cross sections for neutrons on unstable fission fragments and actinides are required for the design of better fast-neutron reactors. The contributions of a FRIB to these questions would, in large part, be greatly enhanced by the availability of a suitable neutron source at the site. NUCLEAR STRUCTURE A quantitative understanding of nuclear structure is important in problems ranging from the origin of the elements to the use of nuclei as laboratories for probing new interactions. Yet a general theory of nuclear structure remains elusive: the classical formulation of this problem, protons and neutrons interacting through a strong, short-range potential, is difficult to solve except for the lightest nuclei. Nor is it understood in any detail how such a formulation emerges from the underlying theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). For this reason, many of the tools for describing nuclei are based on models constructed to explain observations—such as quantum mechanical tunneling, symmetry breaking, both ordered and chaotic spectral properties, and rotations and vibrations—rather than being derived from fundamental theory. Thus, these tools are of limited utility in terms of both extrapolating power and predicting new phenomena. However, much progress is being made. The first calculations of nucleon-
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States nucleon scattering properties have recently emerged from lattice QCD, and effective field theory, also motivated by QCD ideas, has provided controlled expansions for observables in few-body nuclei. The classical nuclear many-body problem can now be solved exactly through 12 nucleons, owing to the growth in computing power. There are methods for heavier nuclei being formulated that make direct connections with the underlying nucleon-nucleon interaction by defining how that interaction must be modified when used in model calculations. The validation of improved models requires data. While a considerable body of information about nuclei at or near stability exists, a FRIB would test models by providing data in entirely new mass regions. This new information would stimulate further improvements by revealing the shortcomings of current models and uncovering new phenomena requiring conceptual advances in theory. Figure 2.1 illustrates some of the progress that has been made in solving the classical nuclear physics problem, protons and neutrons interacting through a potential derived from two-nucleon scattering data, augmented by three-nucleon forces also constrained by experiment. The results were obtained from computationally intensive variational and Green’s function Monte Carlo calculations. This figure shows that in cases where the classical nuclear many-body problem can be solved, quantitative agreement with experiments is obtained for nuclear ground states and low-lying excitations. Significant in this figure is the important role of three-body forces. They are seen to provide approximately 15 percent of the binding energy, a uniquely large effect in physical systems. A goal of nuclear structure theory is to extend such successes to the heavier nuclei that would be the focus of FRIB research. Such extensions cannot come about through growth in high-performance computing alone. The combinatorial growth of the complexity of the nuclear many-body problem with increasing nucleon number is too steep and the accuracy requirements too severe: typical nuclear binding energies may be 1 percent of the size of the canceling vector and scalar potentials operating within the nucleus. But there are paths forward that promise to combine exact techniques and present knowledge of the two- and three-nucleon potentials with models, thereby making model-based calculations far more reliable. Much is known about the qualitative physics governing the structure of heavy nuclei. Nuclei exhibit a shell structure analogous to that found in atoms, despite the much stronger interactions among the nuclear constituents. Mass measurements show that nuclei with special “magic” numbers of neutrons or protons—2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126—have particular stability. A spherical potential—representing the “mean field” that influences nucleon motion owing to the nucleon’s interactions with the rest of the nucleus—can reproduce this pattern and account for simple excitations of nuclei near magic numbers. But unlike in atoms, impor-
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States FIGURE 2.1 The results for calculations of the energy levels of nuclei up through A = 12 using Green’s function Monte Carlo predictions of the binding energies of ground and excited states of light nuclei. These calculations are based on two- and two-plus-three-nucleon interactions determined from experiment combined with an essentially exact solution of the resulting nonrelativistic nuclear many-body problem. The agreement with experimentally determined energies is approximately 0.5 MeV out of 95 MeV for the two-plus-three-nucleon interaction. Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory, managed and operated by UChicago Argonne, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. tant correlations between the nucleons arise from “residual” strong interactions beyond the mean field. The nuclear shell model, perhaps the most widely used microscopic nuclear model, superimposes such correlations on the shell structure, thereby directly accounting for that part of the residual interaction most important to the long-distance structure of the nucleus. The effects of short-distance correlations can also be treated, though indirectly. The shell model, however, still requires solution of the nuclear many-body
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States problem for many active valence nucleons occupying the quantum states between the magic numbers. This problem also becomes numerically challenging for nuclei beyond nickel (56 nucleons). Thus, other models are needed in which only the most important degrees of freedom are identified and retained, so that a full treatment of all interactions among the valence nucleons can be avoided. This kind of approach to many-body quantum physics can be found in many other fields, such as condensed-matter physics, atomic and molecular physics, and quantum chemistry. Examples of nuclear physics models that have had success include those describing collective motion such as rotations and vibrations, those that simplify the interactions among valence nucleons by limiting interactions to small clusters of nucleons, and those that replace interactions among many nucleons by a density functional describing conditions locally around each nucleon. One dramatic example of collective behavior is the breaking of spherical symmetry by deformation of the nuclear shape into a football or a pancake and the subsequent restoration of that symmetry by the collective rotation of the deformed nucleus, producing a spectrum characteristic of a rigid rotor. Models have been developed to describe the conditions for such shape changes and the resulting nuclear spectra characteristic of rotation. The understanding of such phenomena is limited by the at-present restricted view of all possible nuclei. Most nuclear experiments are conducted with stable nuclei, a group of about 300 species that exist naturally on Earth. These nuclei can be viewed as forming the floor of a valley—called the valley of stability—in a two-dimensional landscape in N and Z (see Figure 2.2). That is, the stable nuclei are a one-dimensional path in (N,Z) through this two-dimensional landscape. Many properties of the stable nuclei have been measured, and most nuclear models have been designed to reproduce these properties. Thus, the important test of understanding nuclear structure will be the extent to which nuclear properties can be predicted in new regions of the landscape—properties of nuclei away from the valley of stability. The effort to understand the broad spectrum of nuclei, stable and unstable, has important implications for other fields. In astrophysics, unstable nuclei play crucial roles in explosive environments such as supernovae and colliding neutron stars. In fact, it is believed that roughly half of the stable nuclei heavier than iron were synthesized as unstable nuclei in the core of an exploding supernova, then ejected into the interstellar medium. The stable r-process nuclei found on Earth are the “daughters” of these unstable parents, formed when the parents decayed back to the valley of stability after the supernova explosion. Nuclear physicists would like to understand how far the nuclear landscape extends beyond the valley of stability: how exotic can a nucleus be while still remaining bound to strong interactions? The valley of stability follows a path that
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States FIGURE 2.2 An artist’s conception of the valley of stability. The valley walls are actually asymmetric: as one adds neutrons the valley wall rises less quickly than when one adds protons, owing to the repulsive Coulomb interaction between protons. This repulsion grows as the square of the number of protons. begins, for light nuclei, with N ~ Z, then later veers toward nuclei with N > Z as the repulsive Coulomb force begins to favor heavy nuclei with fewer protons than neutrons. The walls of the valley are quite asymmetric (see Figure 2.2). Owing to the Coulomb force, only a few protons can be added to a heavy stable nucleus before the nucleus breaks apart. Thus, the valley walls on the proton-rich side are steep, and the proton drip line is not far from the stable valley floor. For this reason, experimentalists have already succeeded in “mapping” the “limit” of stable, proton-rich nuclei through bismuth (Z = 83). In contrast, the valley walls on the neutron-rich side are much less steep: many neutrons can typically be added to a nucleus without causing the nucleus to break apart immediately. Until the advent of radioactive-beam facilities, only relatively few of these neutron-rich nuclei at or near the drip line could be explored. A FRIB is an instrument designed to produce these nuclei, determine their masses, and measure their decay modes. Major sur-
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States prises could result. For example, theory suggests that there may be an undiscovered island of superheavy nuclei, significantly heavier than the most massive stable nucleus, uranium, lying beyond current experiments, but potentially accessible to a FRIB. This description captures the essence of a FRIB’s role in nuclear structure physics: this facility would allow the mapping of a far greater region of the (N,Z) landscape than is currently accessible, thus testing the predictive power of nuclear models and provoking improvements in those models. The measurements from a FRIB would be immediately relevant to explosive environments important to astrophysics and could reveal unexpected nuclear properties, such as unusually long-lived superheavy nuclei. The following discussion expands on these points. Testing Nuclear Structure Concepts Several examples are discussed below to illustrate how a FRIB might probe aspects of nuclear structure not readily accessible with only stable nuclear beams. Probing the Disappearance of Shell Structure Perhaps the most important early advance in microscopic nuclear structure theory was the recognition that the observed regularities in nucleon separation energies with so-called magic numbers could be ascribed to properties of a mean field, despite the very strong short-range repulsion known to exist between nucleons. The shell structure of nuclei with N or Z near the magic numbers is manifested by gaps in the energy spacing and angular momentum of low-lying levels. But robust shell structure, or at least the familiar magic numbers, may prove to be a property only of nuclei near the valley of stability. Theory suggests that some of the known shell gaps close significantly as nuclei become very neutron-rich and/or extended in radius, as illustrated in Figure 2.3. If this behavior is confirmed by experiment, it will influence the distribution of heavy elements produced in the neutron-rich environment of a supernova. One important goal of a FRIB is to produce new neutron-rich, doubly magic nuclei, that is, unstable nuclei where N and Z are both magic. If the shell gaps are unusual, this will demonstrate that the mean field, and thus the interaction of valence nucleons with the rest of the nucleus, differ from that of stable nuclei. Such nuclei are particularly simple probes of the effective internucleon interaction. Specifically, a FRIB is expected to produce the short-lived, doubly magic species 48Ni, 56Ni, 78Ni, 100Sn, and 132Sn and to allow the exploration of their single-particle structure through one-nucleon transfer and knockout reactions for testing if they exhibit the magic shell-structure behavior.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States amount of matter in the universe. One of the best ways to look for a sufficient source of CP violation is by searching for a permanent electric dipole moment in subatomic particles. Other methods for searching for excess CP violation in the quark section are also being actively pursued, including major efforts at B-factories at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan. The discovery of neutrino mass opens up the possibility of CP violation for the leptons. Most particles (with spin) have a finite magnetic dipole moment in their ground state; these moments have no particular significance for fundamental symmetries. However, the presence of an analogous electric dipole moment in their ground state violates time-reversal and CP symmetry and has never been observed. At the level of present experimental sensitivity, an EDM could be a signal of the excess CP violation beyond that allowed by the Standard Model to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry. Many searches for an EDM have been conducted over the years, putting extremely tight bounds on its possible size. The absence of an observable EDM played a role in establishing the mechanism of CP violation in the Standard Model involving the mixing of the three generations of quarks. As a result, the Standard Model predicts negligibly small EDMs, while most extensions of the Standard Model can naturally generate much larger EDMs. Present EDM experiments are already sensitive to the existence of new particles with large CP-violation at the TeV scale and place stringent constraints on many theories proposed to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe.4 Existing techniques for laboratory-based EDM searches are beginning to reach their limits, although several new ideas have emerged. One of the most promising methods for expanding the reach of EDM searches is to choose nuclei with special properties that could enhance the effect of CP-violating interactions. A handful of such nuclei have been identified over the years: for example, 229Pa, 223Ra, 225Ra, and 223Rn. The CP-violating effects are enhanced in these radioactive nuclei because they have a static octupole deformation and closely spaced levels of opposite parity, increasing the mixing of quantum states due to CP-odd nuclear forces. Such pear-shaped nuclei occur only rarely and only in special regions of the nuclear chart. Several theoretical calculations have confirmed that the size of the EDM (if it exists) is expected to be enhanced in these nuclei compared with 199Hg, the most sensitive stable nucleus currently used in EDM searches, by a factor of several hundred to several thousand. Developing better estimates of the enhancement 4 For further reading, see M. Pospelov and A. Ritz, “Electric Dipole Moments as Probes of New Physics,” Ann. Phys. 318, 119-169, 2005.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States factors is an important problem for nuclear structure physics that will become particularly crucial if a finite EDM is observed. EDM searches with radioactive nuclei require the development of new experimental techniques. The most promising approach for Ra isotopes is based on recently developed laser cooling and trapping techniques. As recently as 2005, laser trapping of 225Ra was demonstrated at the Argonne National Laboratory. For the EDM measurement, the atoms will be cooled and collected in a magneto-optical trap, spin polarized, transferred into an optical dipole trap, and placed into a region of high electric field. A permanent EDM would then result in a precession of the nuclear spin proportional to the strength of the electric field. A very different technique is being developed for Rn isotopes at TRIUMF and at the University of Michigan. It involves collecting Rn atoms in a glass cell where they are polarized by spin-exchange collisions with optically pumped alkali atoms, and their precession in an electric field is monitored using gamma- or beta-decay asymmetry. While current EDM searches are very susceptible to various environmental noise sources and often have to contend with significant systematic effects, experiments using radioactive isotopes with large intrinsic sensitivity to CP violation will be much less affected by these problems. Therefore, there is a strong expectation that they will be able to make clean EDM measurements; optimistic forecasts suggest that these results might only be limited by the statistical uncertainty determined by the number of available atoms and the integration time. Currently, 225Ra is produced from a radioactive Th source, while 223Rn will be produced with an Isotope Separator On-Line (ISOL) target at TRIUMF using a 50 kW proton beam. Present sensitivity projections indicate that EDM experiments with radioactive isotopes can improve on current EDM limits by about two orders of magnitude using existing sources. As these new experimental techniques for EDM measurements mature, they will need more intense sources to realize their full potential. Existing ISOL targets are limited by thermal effects due to beam heating, but new concepts that can handle higher-power beams, such as tilted targets and beam rastering, are being developed. It will also be crucial for EDM experiments that future facilities have multiuser capabilities and allow months-long data-collection periods. To assist in advancing this frontier, a FRIB should incorporate these characteristics. Searches for new sources of CP violation are just one example of fundamental interaction studies that can be done with radioactive nuclei. Another important interaction that is still poorly understood is the parity-violating interactions that lead to a nuclear spin distribution called an anapole moment. A nonzero anapole moment has been detected so far in only one nucleus, 133Cs, and its size is not consistent with theoretical estimates. The size of parity violation is enhanced in heavy atoms, making it possible to perform anapole measurements on a string of
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States Fr isotopes. Additional such measurements would continue to expand the horizons of parity-violation studies in nuclear matter. The interdisciplinary nature of fundamental interaction studies also leads to a significant stimulus for other branches of physics and science. For example, the experimental techniques for EDM and anapole-moment measurements come largely from atomic physics, while their results will directly affect theoretical particle physics. New experimental techniques developed for these measurements, such as efficient laser trapping and detection of radioactive atoms, have led to significant improvements in radioactive dating and trace-isotope detection. OTHER SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS Applications of a facility for rare-isotope beams fall into four categories: stockpile stewardship and inertial fusion, medical and biological research, materials science, and advanced fuel development for nuclear power. The chief advantages of a FRIB for these applications are very high isotopic production rates (~100 times those of existing facilities), fairly complete N,Z coverage, and high specific activity. Readers who may be unfamiliar with the material and terms covered in this section are referred to the Glossary (Appendix D). Stockpile Stewardship Because the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program is aimed at maintaining confidence in the U.S. nuclear deterrent without testing, there is greatly increased emphasis on gaining better scientific understanding of all the input information and computational tools used to evaluate the status of the stockpile. In the context of microscopic physics, relevant nuclear data such as cross sections, branching ratios, and transition rates take their place along with other data including radiation opacities and material equations of state in overall detailed assessments of performance uncertainties.5 Because of the extreme operating regimes of nuclear weapons, much of the nuclear input originates from theoretical calculations due to the difficulty in carrying out experiments on unstable nuclear species. This situation led to the consideration of the role for advanced 5 In addition to the question of the accuracy of radiochemical inferences on device performance, there are potentially relevant nuclear data uncertainties in basic cross sections such as D + T → α + n. Here, however, only those nuclear physics issues addressable by exotic-isotope production are discussed.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States facilities such as rare-isotope beam facilities that can give experimental access to this unique regime.6 In the specific arena of the application of nuclear physics to stockpile stewardship and (to some extent) inertial fusion, radiochemical analysis is a powerful tool for evaluating performance. In the analysis of the performance of devices, a wide array of nuclear species has been employed and inferences made from the recovery of samples after nuclear tests. In general, understanding the test results required the modeling of the diverse reaction pathways driven by both neutrons and charged particles spanning an energy spectrum from about 0.1 to 16 MeV. Thus, the required cross sections involve processes such as (n,γ), (n,n′), and (n,2n) on the ground, excited, and isomeric states of stable and radioactive isotopes. The yttrium neutron reaction network and its charged-particle entrance and exit branches shown in Figure 2.11 is a fairly typical example. In addition, fission and fission fragment reactions are an important area of study. All of this is analogous to the r-process, except that (n,2n) is absent because the incident neutron energy is too low. As in astrophysics, high-leverage kinetic paths have been identified and are the subject of many investigations. As most of the needed cross sections have not been measured, statistical reaction models such as that of Walter Hauser and Herman Feshbach are applied. Such statistical models require parameterized nuclear-level densities, angular momenta, and values for the compound-state pre-equilibration cross sections, adding further uncertainty. These parameterizations are typically obtained by fitting existing experimental data on stable species. Importantly, in many cases where the direct cross section cannot be measured, it is also possible to apply a variant of the compound nucleus ansatz using inverse kinematics on related reactions (known as surrogates), thereby allowing experimental tests of key cross sections. The surrogate method is useful in cases both in which the target lifetime is too short for practical scattering experiments and in which a neutron-scattering source is unavailable. A facility capable of isotope production rates significantly greater than those now available could improve this situation in two powerful ways. First, rare-isotope experiments can directly measure cross sections on important radioactive 6 A January 10, 2003, memorandum from Everet Beckner, Deputy Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), to Raymond Orbach, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, stated, “a future Rare-isotope Accelerator (RIA) will be important to science-based stockpile stewardship.… While the NNSA could not build such a facility to fulfill the needs we have for nuclear data, we will be users with interest in nuclear science as well as in specific data.”
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States FIGURE 2.11 Important examples of neutron-induced reactions on isotopes of yttrium. Proton-number-changing charged-particle entrance and exit channels (driven, for instance, by protons or alphas) of importance to nuclear kinetics are also shown. The indicated charge-particle-out reactions are sets of nuclear reactions that alter the number of protons in the nuclei; in order to conserve electric charge, an electrically charged particle is emitted. Courtesy of Larry Ahle and of the University of California, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Department of Energy under whose auspices the work was performed. species and also pin down the needed parameters in compound nucleus calculations directly on actual nuclei of interest. Second, in the event that a suitable neutron-scattering source was not available, it would still be possible to extend the surrogate method over a wider range of the relevant (N,Z) space by examining appropriate inverse reactions on unstable species. The main leverage of a high-flux exotic-beam experimental program is likely the ability to pin down a large fraction of the steps in an important network (such as the Y network and its charged particle feeders) as distinct from a few measurements on a handful of nuclei.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States nuclear chemistry needs are rapidly growing. The anticipated homeland-security-funded activities could absorb all of the nuclear chemists and many of the nuclear physicists trained in the United States. Unless there is an increase in the number of nuclear physicists, perhaps spurred by a new U.S. initiative in low-energy nuclear physics, there is likely to be a surge in unfulfilled demand before 2010 in the number of such applied scientists and engineers.8 Medical and Biological Research Applications of Radionuclides The applications of radionuclides to the medical sciences and biological research fall into the three overlapping categories of imaging, targeted therapy, and radiotracers. In each of these areas, radionuclides offer the capability of imaging local conditions as a function of metabolism as well as delivering site-specific therapies.9 In this subsection the committee discusses some of the broader impacts of rare-isotope science; it should be noted that a U.S. FRIB would not serve as a primary element of medical research; rather, it might advance the science of rare isotopes and that, in turn, could have implications for clinical practices. All three applications mentioned above share the characteristic of requiring isotopes with short lifetimes (<1 day). This is because one wants the radiotracer/ radiopharmaceutical to result in a low integrated dose to the patient, match the lifetime to the metabolic uptake under study, and minimize hazardous waste. Also, rapid-turnaround serial diagnostic tests of patients require short tracer lifetimes. As with other applications of short-lived radionuclides for chemically specific in situ probes, local, high specific activity is also desired, as it leads to the highest site-specific dose. In contrast to medical imaging done with collimated, externally defined sources as in computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanning, imaging with radioactive species can track the local rate of metabolism or of a biological function. Examples of the latter are positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon 8 This estimate is supported in an unpublished paper from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. See also a recent study by the nuclear energy industry that projected great difficulty in replacing the expected retirement of more than 23,000 skilled workers in the next decade (available at =3&catid=1295; accessed January 26, 2007). See additional discussion in Chapter 4 of this report. 9 For further reading, see T.J. Ruth and D.J. Schlyer, “The Uses of Accelerator Produced Radioisotopes,” Ch. 2 in Review of the Applications of Isotopes in Medicine and Biology, forthcoming; or N. Oriuchi, T. Higuchi, H. Hanaoka, Y. Ida, and K. Endo, “Current Status of Cancer Therapy with Radio-Labeled Monoclonal Antibodies,” Ann. Nucl. Med. 19, 355-365, 2005.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States emission computed tomography (SPECT). Typical isotopes applied to these methods are respectively 11C (T1/2 ~ 20.4 minutes) for PET, and 99mTc (T1/2 ~ 6 hours) for SPECT. The very short lifetimes of the PET nuclei require on-site accelerator production, while the SPECT mainstay 99mTc is primarily made via reactor-produced 99Mo (T1/2 ~ 66 hours). These examples also typify the trade-offs between reactor and accelerator production of medical isotopes. Reactors are applied to produce radioisotopes either by (n,γ) reactions in target cells or by the harvesting of fission fragments. Their advantages of low cost and parasitic collection are weighed against several disadvantages, including contamination of samples with multiple isotopes of the same element, resulting in low specific activity; lifetime limitations on the distance to the point of application; and the inability to make some isotopes. In contrast, accelerators have long offered the possibility of using charged-particle reactions to drive production, as well as the applicability of in-flight product filtering to produce high specific activities. The main drawbacks of accelerator production are its high cost and low overall production rates. Of course, one should not assume that a FRIB would produce isotopes at a commercially viable level, but it certainly could produce specific activities that readily allow useful research on applied topics. For instance, a recent experiment in Europe using a novel radioisotope produced at the CERN ISOLDE facility showed significant enhancement in cancer-drug effectiveness; see Appendix E for details. Moving to radiopharmaceutical therapy, there is a variety of radioactive “scalpels” in various stages of development. Beginning with Goldenberg’s original work in 1978, the basic idea is to attach appropriate radionuclides to compounds that are preferentially taken up at the target site (e.g., localized lymphoma cells), and emit decay products (alpha, beta, Auger electron) with appropriate specific activities and range and energy-loss characteristics for the type of diseased tissue in question. As with other applications, the main advantages of the proposed facility for rare-isotope beams for both imaging and radiopharmaceuticals are both the very high isotopic production rates (estimated at approximately 10 times greater than at ISOLDE or TRIUMF) at high specific activity and the complete coverage of almost all candidate nuclei. Given the enormous production rates, parasitic harvesting of appropriate radioisotopes may be attractive. Materials Science Applications of Radionuclides Generally speaking, rare isotopes have broad applications in condensed-matter and materials science as low-density, very-high-signal-to-noise in situ detectors of local atomic environments. Radioactive isotopes offer the synergistic vir-
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Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States tues of chemical specificity with the emission of decay products (gamma, beta) whose angular and spectral content can carry a faithful imprint of local field gradients and crystalline anisotropy. Examples include varieties of photoluminescence of implanted ions, perturbed angular correlation gamma decays, Mössbauer spectroscopy, beta-nuclear magnetic resonance (beta-NMR; see the Glossary in Appendix D), and electron (beta) channeling.10 Radioactive probes can give improvement of many orders of magnitude over conventional probes in detectable defect or impurity densities. In several respects, beta-NMR exemplifies the development of this field and the key role of very high specific activity beams. It is natural to compare beta-NMR with the established technique of muon-spin-resonance (µSR). Both offer as much as a 10-orders-of-magnitude improvement in signal over conventional NMR, through the combination of high polarization and beta-decay anisotropy. They therefore can probe “rare” structures, such as superconducting vortices, local magnetic relaxation, and behaviors at nanostructure material interfaces. However, unlike muons, which are produced well polarized, in beta-NMR one usually needs to produce high-purity beams of the requisite nuclei, then polarize and implant them. This has only recently been possible with the ISOL method and has now been successfully implemented at TRIUMF.11 Beta-NMR has the advantage over µSR because of the former’s much higher intensities of implantable ions and because the nuclei have much longer lifetimes. The study of semiconductors is another key application of radionuclides, where their potential for detecting low-density crystalline defects, impurities, and weak doping gradients is proving very important in the development of higher-performance materials. The great potential of radioactive probes for materials science is currently limited by the capacity to produce pure isotopes. There is, potentially, a very large materials science user community for these applications. Other key issues are the polarization of the beam—it must be quite high—and the intensity requirements of 106 particles per second; the latter is not as challenging as the need for the availability of significant beamtime. Typical experiments require systematic stud- 10 D. Forkel-Wirth, “Exploring Solid State Physics Properties with Radioactive Isotopes,” Rep. Prog. Phys. 62, 527-597, 1999. 11 For further reading, see Z. Salman, R.F. Keifl, K.H. Chow, M.D. Hossain, T.A. Keeler, S.R. Kreitzman, C.D.P. Levy, R.I. Miller, T.J. Parolin, M.R. Pearson, H. Saadaoui, J.D. Schultz, M. Smadella, D. Wang, and W.A. MacFarlane, “Near-Surface Structural Phase Transition of SrTiO3 Studied with Zero-Field β-Detected Nuclear Spin Relaxation and Resonance,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 147601, 2006.
Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the United States ies of many samples as a function of temperature, magnetic fields, pressure, and so on and do not benefit from higher intensities. Hence, a new facility for rare-isotope beams would be of great value for these applications if it met certain requirements for multiuser capabilities and offered long run times. Exotic-Beam Applications to Advanced Reactor Fuel Cycles for Transmutation of Waste The transmutation of waste as a key part of future nuclear power fuel cycles is an active area of study in the United States, Japan, Western Europe, Russia, India, and China. Given the likely future growth of fission power, ideas such as fast neutron reactors and accelerator transformation of waste (ATW) for the mitigation of long-lived radioactive waste will certainly be investigated with much greater urgency. Both fast neutron reactors and ATW use high-energy neutrons either to burn or to irradiate waste, thereby favoring fission over (n,γ) processes causing the net destruction of unwanted actinides. In order to accomplish this goal, however, a wide variety of neutron cross sections, including many on unstable neutron-rich isotopes, are required for the improved designs of the detailed operating regime, determining the required levels of isotopic separation and purity. Many of the required cross sections could be measured at a rare-isotope facility in a manner analogous to needs for stockpile stewardship and astrophysics, either by using direct neutron reactions (if available) or by application of the surrogate method. For an application such as this one, the utility of a rare-isotope facility is not in its production of highly exotic nuclei but in the high-volume production of isotopes from which high-precision cross sections can be extracted.