The Laboratory
Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory is a Department of Energy -funded laboratory with research faculty from three major universities within the Research Triangle area: Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Located on the campus of Duke University behind the Physics department, TUNL draws additional collaborators from many universities in the southeast, as well as from labs and universities across the country and all over the world.
Research Focus
During the last 10 years TUNL has evolved from a successful three university research institution centered around the local FN Tandem accelerator with its unique polarization capabilities into a research enterprise of tremendous breadth and diversity. Researchers at TUNL use a wide range of facilities and techniques to explore the following areas:
- Electromagnetic Nuclear Physics
- Nuclear Astrophysics
- Few-Nucleon Systems
- Neutrino Physics
- Nuclear Structure
- Fundamental Symmetries
Laboratory Resources
This is an especially exciting time at TUNL. In addition to the ongoing research programs, two new facilities were recently added to TUNL's already impressive resources. The Low-Energy Nuclear Astrophysics Laboratory began operating in 2001, and the first experiments were performed at the new High-Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS) at about the same time. Also in 2001, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a funding package which will upgrade the HIGS facility, making it a world-class unique source of intense gamma-ray beams ideally suited to studies in low and medium energy physics.
A brief description of the resources available at TUNL is given below:
High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source (HIGS)-The newest on-site facility used by TUNL researchers is the High-Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS) at the Duke Free-Electron Laser Laboratory (DFELL). A storage-ring FEL is used to produce a high-intensity and monoenergetic gamma-ray beam in the energy range from 2 to 50 MeV by intracavity Compton backscattering. The Department of Energy (DOE) has recently approved an upgrade of the injection system which will make it possible to produce gamma rays of high average flux at energies up to 225 MeV.
The Tandem Laboratory- A 10 MV FN tandem equipped with a variety of ion sources, beam lines and target stations constitutes one of the main facilities at TUNL. The associated polarized ion source is the most intense source of dc polarized H+ and D+ ions in the world. Unpolarized beams of protons and deuterons are available from a direct extraction negative ion source. These beams are being used in a wide range of nuclear reaction studies including few-body reactions, radiative capture and polarized neutron induced reactions.
Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics (LENA) - This facility consists of a 200 kV high-intensity proton accelerator and a 1 MV low-intensity Van de Graaff accelerator. The research at LENA is concentrated on studying nuclear physics relevant to stellar evolution and explosive burning.
Funding Sources The nuclear physics research programs at TUNL and HIGS are funded by
grants from the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy (DOE) DE-FG02-97ER41033 (Duke),
DE-FG02-03ER41231 (Duke), DE-FG02-97ER41042 (NC-State), DE-FG02-97ER41041 (UNC), DE-FG52-06NA26155 (Duke
NNSA), and 2008-DN-077-ARI014 (DNDO). The REU program at TUNL is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) NSF-05-52723.