Atomic nuclei can warp into the shape of a pear, and that asymmetry may explain why the universe contains matter instead of nothing but light. This research programme uses particle accelerators to probe the extremes of nuclear matter—from the fastest-spinning heavy nuclei just before they tear apart, to the superhot quark-gluon plasma recreated in collisions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The central puzzle is that current theoretical models disagree wildly on how nuclei behave under these conditions. By measuring exotic nuclei near the limits of stability—including those that emit protons or exist only briefly beyond the “drip lines”—the team will provide hard data to settle which calculations are correct. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. The work addresses how matter formed in the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang, and how heavy elements are forged inside stars. A deeper understanding of nuclear forces and phase transitions could, in the long term, inform models of neutron star interiors or improve predictions for nuclear energy systems, but the primary payoff here is knowledge about the fabric of the universe itself.
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The majority of visible mass of the universe is made up of atomic nuclei that lie at the centre of atoms. Nuclear physics seeks to answer fundamental questions such as: "How do the laws of physics work when driven to the extremes? What are the fundamental constituents and fabric of the universe and how do they interact? How did the universe begin and how is it evolving? What is the nature of nuclear and hadronic matter?" The aim of our research is to study and measure the properties of atomic nuclei and hot nuclear matter in order to answer these questions. For exotic nuclear systems lying far from stability we will explore how the nucleus prefers to rearrange its shape, which can be a sphere, rugby ball, etc. and how it stores its energy among the possible degrees of freedom. We will study the properties of the very few cases where nuclei can assume the shape of a pear, that may be key in understanding why the universe has a matter-antimatter imbalance. We will explore in the region of the proton and neutron drip lines, which are the borders between bound and unbound nuclei and are relevant to understanding how atomic nuclei are synthesised in stars. Nuclei beyond the proton drip line have so much electrical charge that they are highly unstable and try to achieve greater stability through the process of proton emission. We will investigate how this process is affected by the nucleus' shape and structure, and make precision measurements of these fundamental properties using lasers. No one yet knows just how many neutrons and protons can be made to bind together. We will study the heaviest nuclei that can be made in the laboratory and determine their properties which will allow better predictions to be made for the "superheavies". We will also investigate how the properties of nuclei develop as we make them spin faster and faster, determining the precise nature of ultra-high spin states in heavy nuclei, just before the nucleus breaks up due to fission. Nuclear matter can exist in different phases, analogous to the solid, liquid, gas and plasma phases in ordinary substances. By varying the temperature, density or pressure, nuclear matter can undergo a transition from one phase to another. In extreme conditions of density and temperature (about 100 thousand times more than the temperature at the heart of the sun!), a phase transition should occur and quarks and gluons (of which the protons and neutrons are made) should exist in a new state of matter called the Quark-Gluon Plasma. By colliding nuclei together at high energies at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, we will study properties of this new state of matter. Such information is not only important for nuclear physics but also to understand neutron stars and other compact astrophysical objects. This programme of research will employ a large variety of experimental methods to probe many aspects of nuclear structure and the phases of strongly interacting matter, mostly using instrumentation that we have constructed at several world-leading accelerator laboratories. The work will require a series of related experiments at a range of facilities in order for us to gain an insight into the answers to the questions posed above. These experiments will help theorists to refine and test their calculations that have attempted to predict the properties of nuclei and nuclear matter, often with widely differing results. The resolution of this problem will help us to describe complex many-body nuclear systems and better understand conditions in our universe a few fractions of a second after the big bang.
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