Fig. 1 and 2: Experimental setup of IS 554 at HIE-ISOLDE, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Fig 3: Monte Carlo simulations for the experiment

Fig 4: Resonance state wave functions of an exotic nucleus using supersymmetric quantum mechanics

I work in the area of nuclear physics involving rare isotope beams. Presently a world-wide effort is put into pursuing rare isotope science to study nuclear structure, reactions and astrophysics. Experiments with these new isotopes will lead to a comprehensive understanding of nuclei and the origin of the elements in the universe. It is well known that there is a serious anomaly between the observed and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis predicted abundance of 7Li, known as the cosmological lithium problem. I am trying to address this issue through breakup and transfer reactions of 7Be. We would be carry- ing out an experiment at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, in November 2018 with me as the principal investigator. This measurement at HIE-ISOLDE, CERN is immensely important to address the 7Li problem, particularly in the context of the newly conjectured light electrically neutral particles X. I also collaborated in an experiment to study n-p pairing carried out at the rare isotope beam facility GANIL, Caen, France. To complement experimental findings on unstable/unbound nuclei, we have developed a robust theoretical framework to study resonances. The resonance states and wave functions of unstable/unbound nuclei were reproduced for the first time by adopting supersymmetric quantum mechanics. The energy and width of the resonance states of the unstable 11Be and unbound 15Be nuclei obtained were in excellent agreement with experimental data. It becomes apparent that the present framework gives excellent results and is a powerful tool to theoretically complement the increasingly important accelerator based experiments with unbound nuclei.