Radioactive isotopes in the interstellar medium

Radioactive components of the interstellar medium provide an entirely-different and new aspect to the studies of the interstellar medium. Injected from sources of nucleosynthesis, unstable nuclei decay along their trajectories. Measurements can occur through characteristic gamma rays that are emitted with the decay, or in cosmic material samples through abundances of parent and daughter isotopes as they change with decay. The dynamics and material flows within interstellar medium are thus accessible to measurement, making use of the intrinsic clock that radioactive decay provides. We describe how measurements of radioactive decay have obtained a break-through in studies of the interstellar medium, after first summarizing the characteristics of radioactivity and the sources of unstable nuclei.

Radiopharmaceuticals: On-Going Research for Better Diagnosis, Therapy, Environmental, and Pharmaceutical Applications

Radiopharmaceutical material is a pharmaceutical product or drug that may exert spontaneous degradation of unstable nuclei with nuclear particles or photons emission. Radiopharmaceuticals may be used in research, diagnosis, therapy, and environmental purposes. Moreover, radiopharmaceuticals act as radioactive tracers among patients via gamma-ray emissions. Therefore, the uses of radiopharmaceuticals as diagnostic agents may be given to patients to examine any biochemical, molecular biology, physiological, or anatomical abnormalities. Therapeutic radiopharmaceutical may be administered internally for therapeutic purposes via selective effect on certain abnormal cells or organs. The best known example for therapeutic radiopharmaceuticala is iodide131 for thyroid ablation in among patients with hyperthyroid. A third class of radiopharmaceutical is drug labeling which mainly used in research by using small amount of radioactive substances not for diagnostic purposes, but to investigate the metabolism, bio-distribution, pharmakodynamic, and pharmakokinetic of certain drugs in a nonradioactive form. This chapter focuses mainly on basic fundamentals of radiopharmaceutical chemistry, preparation, environmental, pharmaceutical, diagnostic, therapeutic, and research applications.

Complex scaling: Physics of unbound light nuclei and perspective

The complex scaling method (CSM) is one of the most powerful methods of describing the resonances with complex energy eigenstates based on non-Hermitian quantum mechanics. We present the basic application of CSM to the properties of the unbound phenomena of light nuclei. In particular, we focus on many-body resonant and non-resonant continuum states observed in unstable nuclei. We also investigate the continuum level density (CLD) in the scattering problem in terms of the Green’s function with CSM. We discuss the explicit effects of resonant and non-resonant contributions in CLD and transition strength functions.

Calculation of the Differential Breit–Rosenthal Effect in the 6s6p 3P1,2 States of Hg

Studies of the hyperfine anomaly has found a renewed interest with the recent development of techniques to study the properties of long chains of unstable nuclei. By using the hyperfine structure for determining the nuclear magnetic dipole moments, the hyperfine anomaly puts a limit to the accuracy. In this paper, the differential Breit–Rosenthal effect is calculated for the 6s6p3P1,2 states in 199Hg as a function of the change in nuclear radii, using the MCDHF code, GRASP2018. The differential Breit–Rosenthal effect was found to be of the order of 0.1%fm−2, in most cases much less than the Bohr-Weisskopf effect. The results also indicate that large calculations might not be necessary, with the present accuracy of the experimental values for the hyperfine anomaly.

Formation processes of additional charge carriers in nanosilicon under the influence of epithermal neutrons

The nuclear transmutation in the nanosilicon under the influence of epithermal neutrons and the formation processes of charge carriers under the influence of gamma and beta rays emitted by unstable nuclei were theoretically and experimentally investigated. These studies may provide information on the origin and number of electroactive defects in neutron-irradiated nanosilicon.

Light element ($$Z=1,2$$) production from spontaneous ternary fission of $$^{252}$$Cf

The yields of light elements ($$Z=1,2$$ Z = 1 , 2 ) obtained from spontaneous ternary fission of $$^{252}$$ 252 Cf are treated within a nonequilibrium approach, and the contribution of unstable nuclei and excited bound states is taken into account. These light cluster yields may be used to probe dense matter, and to infer in-medium corrections such as Pauli blocking which is determined by the nucleon density. Continuum correlations are calculated from scattering phase shifts using the Beth-Uhlenbeck formula, and the effect of medium modification is estimated. The relevant distribution is reconstructed from the measured yields of isotopes. This describes the state of the nucleon system at scission and cluster formation, using only three Lagrange parameters which are the nonequilibrium counterparts of the temperature and chemical potentials, as defined in thermodynamic equilibrium. We concluded that a simple nuclear statistical equilibrium model neglecting continuum correlations and medium effects is not able to describe the measured distribution of H and He isotopes. Moreover, the freeze-out concept may serve as an important ingredient to the nonequilibrium approach using the relevant statistical operator concept.