Mini-workshop on Nuclear Physics Research in Turkey at the Istanbul University
The 75th meeting of the Nuclear Physics Board of the EPS took place in Istanbul on May 28-29 2018. On the first day, the Rector of the Istanbul University, Prof. Dr. Mahmut Ak, welcomed the NPD board in the majestic Rectorate building.
A mini-workshop followed, comprising 5 talks which provided an extensive overview of the research activity in nuclear physics in Turkey.
L. Susam presented the Turkish Physical Society (TPS), outlining its history, purpose, and current activities. The annual TPS congress, which has featured, several times, Nobel Prize winners among its invited speakers, has on average about 1,000 participants. TPS bestows various awards, in particular to promising young scientists, in order to encourage Turkish physicists in the pursuit of their research careers.
R.B. Cakirli, member and scientific secretary of the NPD board, provided an overview of “Nuclear physics studies in Turkey”. Fifteen out of the 250 universities in Turkey are actively involved in nuclear physics research. Their activities include theoretical nuclear physics, environmental radiation measurements, nuclear structure studies, and nuclear astrophysics. One of the most active nuclear physics teams in the country is that of Istanbul University (IU), which collaborates with several European and extra-European institutions, participating in experiments running at GSI, CERN, RCNP Osaka, GANIL, Jyvaskyla, RIKEN. The IU group is also involved in theoretical nuclear physics for the interpretation of the experimental results.
K. Bozkurt gave two presentations, reporting the activities of Yildiz Technical University in nuclear structure theory and in applied nuclear technology. The first talk, “Mean Field Description from Exotic Nuclei to Hypernuclei”, provided an overview of several applications of mean-field calculations based on the Hartree-Fock framework. A particular effort is devoted to the structure of hypernuclei, in parallel with the intense ongoing experimental effort in several worldwide facilities. The second talk reported on the development of betavoltaic batteries, which convert beta particles from a radioactive isotope source producing several years of electricity, depending on the half-life of the adopted isotope. Possible applications of betavoltaic batteries to cochlear implants are being explored.
N. Ozkan presented the experimental work that the Kocaeli University nuclear physics group carries out. The university has a gamma-spectroscopy lab, in which activity and half-life measurements are carried out. However, the focus of the team is on nuclear astrophysics, in particular with the study of p-processes. The data taking is carried out at Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), in collaboration with several international groups.
L. Sahin presented the “Environmental radioactivity studies in nuclear physics research laboratory at Istanbul University (IU)”. The lab, which the board had the chance to visit after the conclusion of the mini-workshop, was built in 2013, and has been providing research subjects for Masters and PhD students since. At the IU laboratory, gamma- and alpha-spectroscopy systems are adopted, to test for the presence of various kinds of radionuclides in water, soil, and food samples.
The mini-workshop ended with a talk on “Accelerator R&D in Turkey: National Projects and International Collaborations” by O. Yavas. A fervent accelerator R&D effort is ongoing in. The creation of the Turkish Accelerator Center (TAC) will boost Turkish science and technology overall. The TAC, which is under construction, includes a synchrotron radiation facility, a Free Electron Laser, a low-to-medium energy proton accelerator, and an electron-positron collider to be used as a charm factory. The Proton Accelerator Facility (TAEK) houses a 15-30 MeV proton cyclotron, which started its activity in 2015. The main purpose of this facility is accelerator R&D and production of radioisotopes. Turkish teams are also actively involved in other local accelerator projects as well as in international accelerator collaborations, in particular at CERN with the FCC and LHeC projects.
The full program of the mini-workshop can be found here.
After the mini-workshop, a tour of several physics departments and laboratories of Istanbul University took place. The NPD board members visited the Astronomy Department, the Nano & Optoelectronics research lab, the Atomic and Molecular Physics Division, the Laser and Molecular Spectroscopy physics division, and the Nuclear Physics Division and its Research Laboratory. Remarkably, the majority of the science teams at IU are led by female scientists, a fact which is a striking counter-tendency with respect to most countries. Indeed, statistics report that women comprise more than 60% of the Turkish physics research community.
