December 5, 2006
UW gets major role in Energy Department project to study properties of nuclei
A University of Washington team will lead a new $15 million U.S. Department of Energy project to use advanced computing resources to study the physics of atomic nuclei.
The work will contribute to a better theory of nuclear properties, which is needed to understand various processes in astrophysics, particularly how elements are created in the stars, said George Bertsch, the UW physics professor who is leading the work.
There also are applications for engineering, he said, including the design of next-generation electrical power reactors, reactors to burn nuclear waste, and simulations to help eliminate the need for testing nuclear weapons.
“I anticipate that this collaborative effort between computer scientists and nuclear physicists will bring about a dramatic improvement in the accuracy and reliability of theoretical predictions of the properties of nuclei,” Bertsch said.
Specifically, the scientists hope to produce precise calculations that are needed to for more reliable computer simulations of the operation of a nuclear reactor or of a nuclear explosion.
The Institute for Nuclear Theory at the UW will administer $6 million over five years for the project called “A Universal Nuclear Energy Density Functional.” Computer models will extensively use “density functional theory,” a tool that has been successful in the fields of chemistry and materials science for predicting the properties of molecules and other systems.
The project will be conducted by a consortium of eight universities and six national laboratories and is led by Bertsch and Aurel Bulgac, also a UW physics professor.
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For more information, contact Bertsch at (206) 543-2895 or bertsch@phys.washington.edu; or Bulgac at (206) 685-2988 or bulgac@phys.washington.edu
