An expanded periodic table shows where researchers expect elements 119 and 120 to be categorized if they are discovered.

A major breakthrough in our heavy element program was achieved and published, with the first production of a superheavy element, Livermorium (Z=116), using a 50Ti beam. Find out more in this issue about how this achievement opens the door to search for Element 120.

First half assembly of the GRETA lifted by crane

The goats are back at the Lab, so it must be summer. It is also the time to welcome nine summer interns who are working with teams across the Division. There was much to celebrate since the last newsletter.

Preliminary Eos event data visualization showing detected light seen by the PMT array.

It was wonderful to learn that Alan Poon is among five Berkeley Lab researchers elected into the 2023 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Heartfelt congratulations to Alan and all 2023 AAAS fellows.

SULI undergraduate Phoebe Andromeda presenting their GFET work at the Conference Experience for Undergraduates (CEU) poster session.

2023 has been an important year for Nuclear Science in the U.S. with the roll out of the new NSAC Long Range Plan (LRP) on Nuclear Science “A New Era of Discovery”.

Artist’s rendering of the COSI-SMEX satellite.

Fall is kicking off with major developments. The Nuclear Science community is rolling out its new Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science with ambitious scientific and technical goals and clear priorities for the years ahead…

GRETA Independent Project Review team.

This issue provides insights on why coherent photonuclear interactions in ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) at ALICE and STAR provide physics opportunities while also presenting a puzzle for our theoretical understanding of…

Tetsuo Hatsuda, Director of RIKEN iTHEMS, and Reiner Kruecken celebrating the signing of the LBNL-iTHEMS MoU.

In this issue of the NSD Newsletter we learn about exciting theoretical studies by the NSD theory group of Mach cones that are produced by jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions and provide insights on the equation of state and shear viscosity…

Visualization of the overlap of two nucleons in a SRC.

2023 promises to be an exciting year. The U.S. nuclear science community, with strong involvement by division members, is developing its new NSAC Long Range Plan. Major projects of the division are advancing with GRETA moving into…

LBNL Scientist Daniel Hellfeld and H3D detector (mounted on tripod) in front of the Type-30B UF6 cylinder storage yard.

The 88-Inch Cyclotron facility provides high-intensity, medium-charge-state ions as well as low-intensity, high-charge-state ion beams to its users. The positively charged ion beams are used for experiments ranging from Super Heavy Element searches…

Particle ID of nuclei produced in the first FRIB experiment. Nuclei to the left of the red line have published half-lives, while the nuclei to the right are new and have never been cataloged before.

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) officially began operations and started its user program in May. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held May 2, 2022 to officially mark the “start of FRIB’s scientific mission” with U. S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and the…

A formula explaining how protons are detected as they are kicked out of the helium nucleus.

The building blocks of matter, protons, and neutrons, are made of quarks and held together by gluons. Each of these objects – quarks, gluons, protons, and neutrons…

An artist's conception of the CUPID experiment, showing a cross-section of the device.

CUPID is an experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (NLDBD). The DOE Nuclear Physics program granted Critical Decision Zero (CD-0, “mission need”) to the experiment in…

The superconducting electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source VENUS.

Many of the superheavy elements discovered in the last few decades were produced by bombarding heavy-element targets with high-current beams of neutron-rich isotopes like…

Simulated reconstruction of D0 signal and background, showing the power of the detector to observe separated charm vertices.

With CD-0 from the DOE and the formation of an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) Project Office, experimental physicists are spending more time thinking about EIC detectors…

The LEGEND-1000 ASIC test board.

The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (LEGEND) project is a next-generation experiment to search for the lepton-number-violating process neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) in…

STAR event display of a central (head-on) Au+Au collision with back-to-back jets.

Collisions of heavy atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN generate tiny droplets of matter under conditions of…

Branding for a newsletter section titled “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Moments”

With this issue, we are proud to introduce a new regular newsletter section “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Moments,” highlighting recent Division DEI activities.

Signs noting new COVID safety procedures taped to a window.

For the Nuclear Science Division (as for the lab as a whole), safety is our highest priority. So, most of us are working from home, on data analysis, simulations, writing, and other tasks…

A Quad Module (QM), part of the Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA).

Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA) is a 4π germanium tracking detector capable of reconstructing the energy and three-dimensional position of γ-ray interactions that will provide an unparalleled resolving power…