Aaron Gallant, a UBC graduate student, was awarded the 2013 Dr. Carl H. Wescott Memorial Fellowship, for his research on precision mass measurements. This award is granted annually to one graduate student at TRIUMF for outstanding research capabilities.
Aaron has been forging a path of research excellence at TRIUMF since he first joined in 2007 as a summer research student from Saint Mary's University, Halifax, N.S. Then a fourth-year astrophysics student, Aaron ran simulations to understand suspected slight misalignments in the experimental equipment with DRAGON, and was awarded the Undergraduate Summer Research Award.
Currently, he is focused on studying subatomic physics and experimental nuclear structures for his Ph. D at UBC and collaborates on TITAN, TRIUMF's Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear Science. His research at TRIUMF resulted in works that were shared at the Nuclear Structure 2012 conference in Chicago and again more recently at the 152nd Nobel Symposium in Sweden. This Symposium exists to inform the Nobel Prize committee of breakthrough research in science, which may be of use to the committee as they select Nobel Prize winning work over the coming several years. The Nobel committee invited TRIUMF's Deputy Division Head of Science, Jens Dilling to speak on Physics with Radioactive Beams.
"The calcium mass measurements, which Aaron spearheaded into new territory, were one of the most talked about research highlights at the recent Nobel Symposium on Physics with Radioactive Beams," said Jens.
Aaron's decision to conduct his research at TRIUMF was largely due to the availability of the facility's world-class scientific instruments. Experiments behind mass measurements of rare isotopes prove incredibly difficult due to the vastly reduced yields of the very neutron rich isotopes. Such high-level research requires the best and most precise tools and equipment that are available for analysis. At TRIUMF, such tools include the actinide target uranium carbide targets and TRILLIS, which plays an integral role in high-level research.
In his research, Aaron took precise measurements of rare isotopes. Aaron explains, "Mass measurements are used to look into the inner workings of the nucleus to understand the basic properties of atoms. Precision mass measurements of the neutron-rich calcium and potassium isotopes 51, 52Ca were for the first time measured to a mass of 51K at the TITAN facility". The measured masses deviated greatly from what was previously known and shed light on the evolution of nuclear forces in neutron-rich nuclei, thus serve as important guides for new theoretical predictions. This agreement between theory and experiment is of great importance to the fields of nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics.
The TITAN experimental results spurred significant theoretical activities such as a theory paper published in Physical Review Letters (G. Hagen et al.) and new theory calculations in [1]A. T. Gallant et al., "New precision mass measurements of neutron-rich calcium and potassium isotopes and three-nucleon forces.," Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 109, no. 3, pp. 032506–032506, Jul. 2012. More on Aaron's research here: Looking for Magic in Calcium.
"[I'm] not sure what the future holds," Aaron says, remaining optimistic. "There are several new rare isotope facilities being built around the world, and many of them will have Penning trap mass spectrometers. These 'second generation' facilities will greatly increase the number of isotopes that can be studied near the driplines".
Aaron, on behalf of TRIUMF, we congratulate you on this award and wish you the best!
-- by Melissa Baluk, Communications Assistant