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Gary E. Mitchell
Areas of Interest
Primary research areas are quantum chaos in nuclei, parity violation in nuclei, and nuclear level densities. The fluctuation properties of nuclear levels are used as a signature for chaos in quantum many-body systems. Statistical properties of nuclear states and of transitions between these states are measured with the ultra high-resolution proton beam at TUNL. Our work on 26Al and 30P provided the first experimental tests of the effect of symmetry breaking on fluctuation properties. Much of this research is performed in collaboration with theorists at the Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany; the Centro Internacional de Ciencias, Cuernavaca, Mexico; Michigan State University; and the Institute of Physics, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Another primary interest is parity violation in nuclei. Using epithermal neutrons from the Proton Storage Ring facility at the Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center, parity violation is studied by the TRIPLE Collaboration, which includes researchers from NCSU, Delft (Holland), Duke (USA), JINR (Russia), KEK and Kyoto (Japan), LANL (USA) and TRIUMF (Canada). Utilizing a statistical approach to the analysis, the effective nucleon-nucleus weak interaction has been determined for a number of nuclei. In addition to numerous detailed publications, an article that emphasizes the generic features of the process was published in Reviews of Modern Physics -- Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 445 (1999). A comprehensive review of these results (by Mitchell, Bowman, Penttila, and Sharapov) was recently submitted to Physics Reports.
Another research interest involves nuclear level densities. Recent Shell Model Monte Carlo calculations have made significant progress in the calculation of average parameters such as level densities, which are very important for nuclear astrophysics and the study of nuclei far from stability, as well as for practical applications. The measurements that involve direct counting of nuclear levels are performed with the ultra high-resolution beam at TUNL. Measurements of average level densities are performed at Berkley and at the University of Oslo. The latter work is a collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of Oslo.
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