Menu
HIMsight - an Insight into HIM 10/2020
14th Oct 2020

Dear Partners & Colleagues,

this first HIM-newsletter comes late this year due to the special circumstances of the Corona pandemic.

Like the rest of Germany, HIM went into a complete lockdown from mid march to the beginning of August. The building and our laboratories were closed, meetings took place online, the scientists worked from home.

Even now we work in a so-called "limited normal operation", like the rest of the Johannes Gutenberg University, where the HIM is situated. However, with an elaborate hygiene policy, we manage to execute our research as ususal.

You can witness, that this is working quite well by the following news and achievements of the last months.

Let us hope that we can gradually return to normal work.

Stay healthy! With best regards from Mainz

 

 
Yours
Prof. Kurt Aulenbacher - Director
Prof. Kurt Aulenbacher - Director
RESEARCH
New simple method for measuring the state of lithium-ion batteries
New simple method for measuring the state of lithium-ion batteries

HIM-researchers present new technique for measuring the charge state, defects, and capacity losses of rechargeable batteries using atomic magnetometry.

Rechargeable batteries are at the heart of many new technologies involving, for example, the increased use of renewable energies. More specifically, they are employed to power electric vehicles, cell phones, and laptops. Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) in Germany have now presented a non-contact method for detecting the state of charge and any defects in lithium-ion batteries. For this purpose, atomic magnetometers are used to measure the magnetic field around battery cells. Professor Dmitry Budker and his team usually use atomic magnetometry to explore fundamental questions of physics, such as the search for new particles.
The broken mirror: Can parity violation in molecules finally be measured?
The broken mirror: Can parity violation in molecules finally be measured?

Scientists from the Helmholtz Institute Mainz and the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence propose a promising way to detect parity violation in molecules for the first time!

Scientists have long tried to experimentally demonstrate a certain symmetry property of the weak interaction - parity violation - in molecules. So far, this has not been possible. A new interdisciplinary effort led by a research group at the at the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has now shown a realistic path to demonstrating this phenomenon. The approach includes aspects of nuclear, elementary particle, atomic and molecular physics as well as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
New infrastructure for" Advanced Demonstrator" (HELIAC) accelerator module at GSI
New infrastructure for" Advanced Demonstrator" (HELIAC) accelerator module at GSI

New infrastructure with beam of "Advanced Demonstrator" (HELIAC) accelerator module at GSI

„Advanced Demonstrator“ is the first module of cw (continuous waves) capable superconducting heavy ion accelerator HELIAC.

It consists of 4 superconducting multigap Cross Bar H-mode cavities with high accelerating gradient that in turn provide a compact and efficient accelerator. The new installed infrastructure at GSI supplies the Advanced Demonstrator with liquid Helium.

The entire HELIAC accelerator would provide increased projectile intensity in continuous wave (CW) mode and remarkably improve the work of the HIM-section Superheavy Elements (SHE).
Researchers present concept for a new technique to study superheavy elements
Researchers present concept for a new technique to study superheavy elements

Merging methodologies from physics and chemistry for the optical spectroscopy of superheavy elements!

Superheavy elements are intriguing nuclear and atomic quantum systems that challenge experimental probing as they do not occur in nature and, when synthesized, vanish within seconds. Pushing the forefront atomic physics research to these elements requires breakthrough developments towards fast atomic spectroscopy techniques with extreme sensitivity. A joint effort within the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program and led by Dr. Mustapha Laatiaoui from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) culminated in an optical spectroscopy proposal: The so-called Laser Resonance Chromatography (LRC) should enable such investigations even at minute production quantities
Mass of the deuteron corrected
Mass of the deuteron corrected

Scientists from Heidelberg, Mainz and Darmstadt publish results in Nature
High-precision measurements of the mass of the deuteron, the nucleus of heavy hydrogen, provide new insights into the reliability of fundamental quantities in atomic and nuclear physics. This is reported in the journal Nature by a collaboration led by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg and partners from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research Darmstadt, and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM). Thus, data directly related to the atomic mass standard are now available for hydrogen H, deuterium D, and the molecule HD, which the scientists have also reweighed.
ABOUT HIM
First groundbreaking ceremony for the new nuclear chemistry building
First groundbreaking ceremony for the new nuclear chemistry building

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz is one of the few German universities that offers nuclear chemistry and radiopharmaceutical chemistry across the board in research and teaching.
With its high-quality equipment, the new nuclear chemistry building will open up new perspectives in research and training in the field of nuclear and radiochemistry.
"This new building with its modern and highly technical laboratory space will further promote the nationally and internationally outstanding work of Mainz nuclear chemistry," explains the President of JGU, Prof. Dr. Georg Krausch. "Because nuclear chemistry, like chemistry in general, is one of our excellent and most research-active areas and contributes significantly to the profile of our university. The TRIGA reactor in Mainz plays a central role in the PRISMA + excellence cluster at JGU."
FAIR storage ring CRYRING ready for use
FAIR storage ring CRYRING ready for use

The first FAIR storage ring, the so-called CRYRING, is ready to conduct experiments for the scientific research community. CRYRING is an extremely successful ion storage ring that has enabled key research contributions in atomic and molecular physics in Stockholm for many years.
It was brought to GSI and FAIR in Darmstadt as a Swedish in-kind contribution. Here it was modernized, adapted to FAIR standards and connected to the experimental storage ring ESR.

Various experiments by scientific users with international participation were already planned for this spring at the CRYRING. However, due to the corona pandemic they had to be cancelled for the time being and postponed to future operating periods. Nevertheless, work continued on the full commissioning of the facility. This involved not only transporting highly charged, heavy lead ions (beryllium-like Pb78+ and later also Pb82+ with completely removed electron shell) from the GSI linear accelerator UNILAC via the ring accelerator SIS-18 and the experimental storage ring ESR to CRYRING, but also storing, cooling and using them for tests of the experimental infrastructure. The lifetimes and electron cooling of the stored beams were in line with previous estimates.
HIM supports the JGU hub of the “Network Particle World”!
HIM supports the JGU hub of the “Network Particle World”!

The cooperation of 30 research institutes, which, under the direction of TU Dresden, bring research on the physics of the smallest particles to schools across Germany, can in future rely on so-called nodes at the universities of Bonn, Mainz and Münster.
At these interfaces, new offers for young people from the research area of hadron and nuclear physics should be developed and regional offers coordinated.

The main hub in Mainz will be dedicated to teaching hadron physics, i.e. research into the question of how exactly quarks and gluons determine the structure of the matter surrounding us. "We will develop new, attractive formats for schoolchildren on this subject: For example, we want to use scatter boards to simulate experiments on hadron physics at the global accelerator facilities and thus illustrate their principle," says Prof. Dr. Achim Denig from HIM.

 
HIM-cooperation partner PRISMA+ provides highlights of 2019
HIM-cooperation partner PRISMA+ provides highlights of 2019

The Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+ offers an overview on its researchers and activities in 2019.

Many projects have been executed jointly with our Helmholtz Institute!

 
AWARDS
HIGHLIGHT PUBLICATIONS
HIM-CONFERENCE REPORTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
Workshop on Physics Opportunities with the Gamma Factory

Workshop on Physics Opportunities with the Gamma Factory, November 30 to December 4, 2020 (online)

The Gamma Factory (GF) initiative, which is a part of the Physics Beyond Colliders project, proposes to develop novel research tools at CERN by producing, accelerating, and storing highly relativistic, partially stripped ion beams in the SPS and LHC storage rings.
Joint THEIA-STRONG2020 and JAEA/Mainz REIMEI Web-Seminar

The cooperation of world-leading experimentalists and theoreticians in the field of strangeness nuclear physics with experts of the neutron star community in astrophysics within the networking activity THEIA of the STRONG-2020 project will allow to critically assess the status of our present understanding, to determine the impact of terrestrial observations for the hadronic EOS, and to identify possible new avenues to follow.
The REIMEI program on "Systems with two strange quarks at FAIR and J-PARC" is a collaborative work between Germany and Japan, supported by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). REIMEI means "dawn" in Japanese, and the seminar series is intended to highlight topics related to strangeness nuclear physics being studied in Germany, Japan, and other countries.