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# Does size matter? Exploring the viability of measuring the charge radius of the first excited nuclear state in muonic zirconium

 dc.contributor.author Wilkinson-Zan, Benjamin dc.date.accessioned 2020-08-26T05:10:53Z dc.date.available 2020-08-26T05:10:53Z dc.date.copyright 2020 en_US dc.date.issued 2020-08-25 dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1828/12029 dc.description.abstract From the point of view of the electromagnetic interaction, empirical descriptions of the nucleus involve only a few parameters, one of the most important being the nuclear charge radius. This has been well measured for ground state nuclei, but it is difficult to measure for excited states, since they decay too quickly for conventional methods to be used. We study the atomic transitions in muonic ^{90}Zr and find that the nuclear charge radius of the first excited state can be inferred by measuring the gamma emissions from certain transitions. We find that with 1keV photon resolution, we can infer a difference between the charge radius of the nuclear ground state and first excited state as small as 0.13%. We will work in units where h = c = 4\pi\epsilon_0 = 1 so that e^2 = \alpha \approx 1/137 (unless otherwise specified). Mass, momentum, and energy will have units of eV, whereas distances will be given in eV^{-1}. In qualitative discussion, we will sometimes revert to discussing distances in meters due to the familiarity of typical scales (e.g. nuclear radius, Bohr radius). When working with 4-vectors in Minkowski space, we use the metric convention (+,-,-,-). en_US dc.language English eng dc.language.iso en en_US dc.rights Available to the World Wide Web en_US dc.subject Physics en_US dc.subject Nuclear Physics en_US dc.subject Atomic Physics en_US dc.subject Muon en_US dc.subject Muonic Zirconium en_US dc.subject Zirconium en_US dc.subject Electric Monopole en_US dc.subject Two Photon en_US dc.subject Magnetic Dipole en_US dc.subject Excited Nuclear State en_US dc.subject Nuclear Charge Radius en_US dc.title Does size matter? Exploring the viability of measuring the charge radius of the first excited nuclear state in muonic zirconium en_US dc.type Thesis en_US dc.contributor.supervisor Pospelov, Maxim dc.degree.department Department of Physics and Astronomy en_US dc.degree.level Master of Science M.Sc. en_US dc.description.scholarlevel Graduate en_US
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