AGATA Celebrates 10(+2) Years Exploring the Atomic Nucleus

Abstract

On 9 June 2022, an international workshop at the Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL) in Padua of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics was held on occasion of the 10(+2) years of scientific activity of the European project Advanced GAmma Tracking Array (AGATA), the most sophisticated instrument in the field of gamma-ray spectroscopy in Europe (Figure 1). AGATA is based on segmented hyper-pure germanium crystals, and it is conceived as a modular detector array, which, once completed, will comprise 180 detectors. This instrument allows, by analysis of the electric signal shapes from the germanium crystals, tracking of the gammaray interactions inside the crystal with a spatial resolution of a few mm. AGATA makes possible to explore, with unparalleled efficiency and sensitivity, the structure of exotic nuclei produced in the laboratory through collisions between heavy ions. Gamma-ray spectroscopy provides some of the most important tools to investigate the atomic nucleus governed by the strong force. Over more than five decades of developments in inbeam spectroscopy, important scientific and technical advances have been made. Indeed, the knowledge of the structure of atomic nucleus has gone pari passu with the technical development of gamma-ray spectrometers that the nuclear community has built up. However, the advent of exotic-ion beam facilities, with weak unstable beam intensities, as well as the need to study reaction channels with low cross-sections, spurred the community to develop gamma-ray arrays with greater detection efficiency and sensitivity, and with much improved Doppler-correction capability. This can be achieved through the new technique of gamma-ray tracking. In Europe, the jewel of this technology is AGATA, which is a collaboration of 13 countries and over 40 research institutes. AGATA’s scientific adventure began in 2010 at the LNL, where it was coupled to the