Research Associate Position at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

This position offers an exciting opportunity to become part of the world-class FRIB community, and to get involved in planning and conducting experiments at this emerging national user facility that will expand nuclear science into a whole new realm of possibility.

The successful candidate will have the unique opportunity to make major contributions to designing, building, commissioning, and running the first scientific experiments with, the Particle X-ray Coincidence Technique (PXCT) detection system for nuclear astrophysics. PXCT will use various solid-state detector technologies to measure radiations (X-rays, gamma rays, protons, and alpha particles) associated with the electron-capture decays of proton-rich nuclides in FRIB’s thermalized rare-isotope beam area. The data will be used to constrain the energies, spins, parities, lifetimes, and branching ratios of unbound states: the ingredients needed to determine the rates of key thermonuclear reactions and photodisintegrations in explosive astrophysical environments such as supernovae and X-ray bursts on accreting neutron stars. These rates will be used to simulate astrophysical observables associated with nucleosynthesis and/or energy generation in collaboration with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics – Center for the Evolution of the Elements (JINA-CEE). Opportunities will also be available to contribute to experiments using other systems including the Gaseous Detector with Germanium Tagging TPC (GADGET II) at FRIB and the Doppler Shift Lifetimes 2 (DSL2) setup at TRIUMF.