At the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt a therapy unit for heavy ion cancer treatment has been established in collaboration with the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum Heidelberg, the Radiologische Universitätsklinik Heidelberg and the Forschungszentrum Rossendorf. For quality assurance the dual-head positron camera BASTEI (Beta Activity meaSurements at the Therapy with Energetic Ions) has been integrated into this facility. It measures ß+-activity distributions generated via nuclear fragmentation reactions within the target volume. BASTEI has about 4 million coincidence channels. The emission data are acquired in a 3D regime and stored in a list mode data format. Typically counting statstics is two to three orders of magnitude lower than those of typical PET-scans in nuclear medicine. Two iterative 3D reconstruction algorithms based on ISRA (Image Space Reconstruction Algorithm) and MLEM (Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization), respectively, have been adapted to this imaging geometry. The major advantage of the developed approaches are run-time Monte-Carlo simulations which are used to calculate the transition matrix. The influences of detector sensitivity variations, randoms, activity from outside of the field of view and attenuation are corrected for the individual coincidence channels. Performance studies show, that the implementation based on MLEM is the algorithm of merit. Since 1997 it has been applied sucessfully to patient data. The localization of distal and lateral gradients of the ß+-activity distribution is guaranteed in the longitudinal sections. Out of the longitudinal sections the lateral gradients of the ß+-activity distribution should be interpreted using a priori knowledge.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Heavy ions are collided at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in an effort to create a unique state of nuclear matter, where quarks and gluons can freely move over volumes larger than the typical size of a nucleon (typical scale of Quantum Chromodynamics, QCD). In this state, called a "Quark Gluon Plasma" (QGP), it is proposed Chiral symmetry is restored. The fact that Chiral symmetry is a symmetry of the Standard model and is broken at low energy (current energy scale of universe) makes the study of its possible very interesting. The analysis in this dissertation searches for signatures of chiral symmetry restoration at the phase transition between the QGP and the hadronic gas phase by using resonance particles as probes. Resonances may decay inside of hot dense matter due to their short lifetimes, and therefore their decay daughters carry away dynamical information such as the mass and decay width. Mass shift and width broadening are predicted signatures of chiral symmetry restoration. The [phi](1020) resonances reconstructed from the dielectron decay channel are investigated in this dissertation. This decay channel does not suffer scattering from the late hadronic medium due to the relatively small interaction cross section of leptons with hadrons. The disadvantage of this channel comes from the small branching ratio. Therefore, large statistics and clean Particle IDentification (PID) are necessary for this analysis. Those requirements were fulfilled with high luminosity beams at RHIC and the newly developed and installed Time Of Flight (TOF) detectors, which provide clear particle identification up to momentum of 2-3 GeV/c, as well as the large acceptance of the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) detector. In this dissertation, measurements of mass, width, transverse momentum spectrum, and yields of [phi][right arrow] e⁺e⁻ at mid-rapidity [mathematical symbols] from the STAR experiment in Au+Au collisions at [mathematical symbols]=200 GeV are presented and compared to a previously measured [phi] meson result from a hadronic decay channel. The possibility of medium modification which implies Chiral symmetry restoration is discussed. / text

For over a decade studies of the strong interaction in extremely dense nuclear environments have been done at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It is hypothesized that colliding two beams of Au nuclei at relativistic speeds creates an environment of hot dense nuclear matter where the quarks and gluons inside the nucleus, which are normally confined within the protons and neutrons, become deconfined into a soup called the quark-gluon plasma. Since direct observation of this short-lived phase is impossible, many sophisticated analysis techniques attempt to study the early interactions via the final state particles. What has emerged from analyses of the data are two, contradictory paradigms for understanding the results. On the one hand the colliding quarks and gluons are thought to strongly interact and reach thermal equilibrium. The other view is that primary parton-parton scattering leads directly to jet fragmentation with little effect from re-scattering. It is in principle possible to distinguish and perhaps falsify one or both of these models of relativistic heavy ion collisions via the analysis of two-particle correlations among all charged particles produced in [mathematical symbols] = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at the STAR experiment at RHIC. This dissertation presents studies of two-particle correlations, whose derivation can be traced back to Pearson's correlation coefficient, in transverse momentum and angular space. In momentum space a broad peak is observed extending from 0.5-4.0 GeV/c which, as a function of nuclear overlap, remains at a fixed position while monotonically increasing in amplitude. Comparisons to theoretical models suggests this peak is from jet fragmentation. In a complementary study the momentum distribution of correlations in ([eta],[phi]) space is investigated. The momentum distribution of correlated pairs that contribute to the peak near the origin, commonly associated with jet fragmentation, is peaked around 1.5 GeV/c and does not soften with increased centrality. These measurements present important aspects of the available six dimensional correlation space and provide definitive tests for theoretical models. Preliminary findings do not appear to support the hypothesis of a strongly interacting QGP where back-to-back jets are expected to be significantly suppressed. / text

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Introduction The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) is a national nuclear physics facility in which heavy ion beams are fragmented to produce exotic nuclei. In this process of fragmentation many nuclei are created, however, only one isotope is selected for experimentation. The remaining isotopes that are created go unused. The future upgrade of the NSCL to the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) will increase the incident energy of these heavy ion beams and amplify the current by three orders of magnitude. An aqueous beam dump will be created to collect the unused isotopes created in the process of fragmentation. Several of these isotopes are of interest for many applications including nuclear security, medical imaging, and therapy and are not currently available or are only available in very limited supply. Harvesting these isotopes from the aqueous beam dump could provide a consistent supply of these im-portant isotopes as an ancillary service to the existing experimental program. Material and Methods A liquid water target system was designed and tested to serve as a mock beam dump for exper-iments at the NSCL1. A 25 pnA 130 MeV/u 76Ge beam was fragmented using a 493 mg/cm2 thick beryllium production target. After fragmentation the beam was separated using the A1900 frag-ment separator2 set up for maximum 67Cu pro-duction using a 240 mg/cm2 aluminum wedge and a 2% momentum acceptance. The secondary beam was collected for four hours in the liquid water target system before being transferred to a collection vessel. Four additional four hour collections were made before finally shipping the five collections to Washington University and Hope College for chemical separation. Four of the five samples were separated using a two part separation scheme. First they were passed through and 3M Empore iminodiacetic acid functionalized chelation disk in a 1.25M ammonium acetate solution at pH 5. The flow through was collected and analyzed using an HPGe detector. Then 10mL of 6M HCl acid was passed through the chelation disk to remove the 2+ transition metals. The 10mL of 6M HCl acid was collected after passing through the disk and added to an anion-exchange column with 2.5 g AG1-X8 resin. The eluate was collected and then an additional 10mL of 6M HCl was passed through the column to remove the nickel. The 67Cu was then collected by passing 10mL of 0.5M HCl and the eluate was collected in 1mL fractions each analyzed by HPGe for 67Cu concentration and purity. The two highest 67Cu fractions were heated to dryness and reconstituted in 50 μL 0.1M ammonium acetate pH 5.5. 2 μL of 7.9 mg/mL NOTA-Bz-Trastuzumab was added to 45 μL of 67Cu and 3 μL 0.1M ammonium acetate pH 5.5. This solution was placed in a shaking incubator at 37 °C for twenty minutes and then analyzed by radio-instant thin layer chromatography in order to determine the per-cent of 67Cu bound to the antibody. Results and Conclusion 67Cu was collected into the liquid water target system with an average efficiency of 85 ± 5 %. The secondary beam was 73 % pure with the impurities, half-lives greater than 1 minute, listed in TABLE 1. Separation of 67Cu from the impurities resulted in an average recovery of 88 ± 3 % for a total recovery of 67Cu from the beam and separation of 75 ± 4 %. No detectable radioactive impurities were found in the final samples when analyzed using an HPGe detector. TABLE 2 shows the amount of 67Cu collected from the beam and the amount recovered decay corrected to end of bombardment. Labeling NOTA-Bz-Trastuzumab with 67Cu resulted in > 95 % radiochemical yield. Collection of the 73 % pure 67Cu beam in water and the resulting separation proved successful. These results demonstrate that radioisotopes can be collected from fragmented heavy ion beams and isolated in usable quantities and purity for many radiochemical applications. Further experimentation with an unpurified beam to better simulate conditions in the beam dump at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will be performed in the near future.

The power consumption of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) has become an important issue for modern integrated circuit design, considering the fact that they occupy large area and consume significant portion of power consumption in modern nanometer chips. SRAM operating in low power supply voltages has become an effective approach in reducing power consumption. Therefore, it is essential to experimentally characterize the single event effects (SEE) of hardened and unhardened SRAM cells to determine their appropriate applications, especially when a low supply voltage is preferred. In this thesis, a SRAM test chip was designed and fabricated with four cell arrays sharing the same peripheral circuits, including two types of unhardened cells (standard 6T and sub-threshold 10T) and two types of hardened cells (Quatro and DICE). The systems for functional and radiation tests were built up with power supply voltages that ranged from near threshold 0.4 V to normal supply 1 V. The test chip was irradiated with alpha particles and heavy ions with various linear energy transfers (LETs) at different core supply voltages, ranging from 1 V to 0.4 V. Experimental results of the alpha test and heavy ion test were consistent with the results of the simulation. The cross sections of 6T and 10T cells present much more significant sensitivities than Quatro and DICE cells for all tested supply voltages and LET. The 10T cell demonstrates a more optimal radiation performance than the 6T cell when LET is small (0.44 MeV·cm2/mg), yet no significant advantage is evident when LET is larger than this. In regards to the Quatro and DICE cells, one does not consistently show superior performance over the other in terms of soft error rates (SERs). Multi-bit upsets (MBUs) occupy a larger portion of total SEUs in DICE cell when relatively larger LET and smaller supply voltage are applied. It explains the loss in radiation tolerance competition with Quatro cell when LET is bigger than 9.1 MeV·cm2/mg and supply voltage is smaller than 0.6 V. In addition, the analysis of test results also demonstrated that the error amount distributions follow a Poisson distribution very well for each type of cell array.

Beams of polarized protons play an important part in the study of the spin dependence of the nuclear force by measuring the analyzing power in nuclear reactions. The source at iThemba LABS produces a beam of polarized protons that is pre-accelerated by an injector cyclotron (SPC2) to a energy of 8 MeV before acceleration by the main separated-sector cyclotron to 200 MeV for physics research. The polarized ion source is one of the two external ion sources of SPC2. Inside the ion source hydrogen molecules are dissociated into atoms in the dissociator and cooled to a temperature of approximately 30 K in the nozzle. The atoms are polarized by a pair of sextupole magnets and the nucleus is polarized by RF transitions between hyperfine levels in hydrogen atoms. The atoms are then ionized by electrons in the ionizer. The source has various sensitive devices, which influence beam intensity and polarization. Nitrogen gas is used to prevent recombination of atoms after dissociation. The amount of nitrogen and the temperature at which it is used plays a very important role in optimizing the beam current. The number of electrons released in the ionizer is influenced by the size and shape of the filament. Optimization of the source will ensure that beams of better quality (a better current and stability) are produced.

Thesis--University of California, Berkeley, 1961. / "UC-4 Physics" -t.p. "TID-4500 (16th Ed.)" -t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-91).