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The second Program Advisory Committee (PAC2) of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams met on March 1-3, 2023. A total of 11,859 facility-use hours were submitted to PAC2 and 4,127 hours (35%) could be approved due to the limited beam time available. The MoNA Collaboration submitted five proposals in partnership with other researchers outside of the collaboration, two of which were approved by the PAC.

The two approved proposals are :

23033 - Investigating the halo structure of 37Mg - A. Revel

23068 - Study of possible p-wave halo in 34Na ground state - B. Monteagudo-Godoy

Those two experiments aim to improve our understanding of phenomena arising when moving away from the valley of beta-stability and in particular on the formation of neutron halos, often observed uniquely in nuclei close to the neutron dripline. Both experiments will shed light on the interplay between deformation, shell evolution, halo formation and coupling to the continuum. The two nuclei of interest, 37Mg and 34Na, will be studied using kinematically complete Coulomb breakup measurement in order to map the dB(E1)/dErel function and extract key information such as the geometrical information of the halo, the neutron separation energy, the ground state and its configuration mixing. The invariant-mass method will be used to reconstruct the relative energy following the Coulomb breakup reaction. The neutron will be detected by the MoNA-LISA array and the recoil fragment will be deflected by the sweeper magnet before to be measured by a set of detectors. In addition, eventual decays towards bound states will be observed using the CAESAR CsI array placed around the target.

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Students and PIs at Davidson College, Virginia State University, Michigan State University, Hope College, Augustana College, and James Madison University are currently constructing and testing SiPMs with plastic scintillators to aid in the design and prototyping of a next generation neutron detector. Custom PCB boards were designed at FRIB and sent to participating MoNA institutions. Davidson College student Ari Maki has been investigating the role of the optical coupling of SiPMs to the scintillators and the reflective wrapping with cosmic rays and collimated gamma rays as part of his honors thesis. Other students have been exploring time and position resolutions, as well as characterizing the performance of different SiPM modules from various vendors.


Scintillator tile with SiPM test board


Davidson College student Ari Maki working with a test module


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The members of the MoNA collaboration were happy to get back into in-person conference mode at DNP-2022! This year's DNP was held in New Orleans, October 27-30. The MoNA Collaboration was well represented with several students participating in the CEU poster session and others giving oral presentations. This included twelve undergraduate students from seven institutions and four graduate students from Michigan State University. Students and faculty gather for a group picture, and Henry Webb of Augustana College poses with his poster.




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