EAST LANSING, Mich. – Daniel Bazin, a senior physicist at Michigan State University’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, has been elected as a 2019 Fellow of the American Physical Society.
APS is a nonprofit membership organization that works to advance and spread knowledge of physics via publications, meetings, activities, and more. Fellows are selected by their peers for their outstanding contributions to physics. Each year, the number of APS fellows elected is no more than one half of one percent of the membership.
Bazin was elected by APS for “groundbreaking work developing nuclear reaction mechanisms for the study of rare isotopes, and for the conception and application of innovative technology to enable novel experiments.”
Bazin’s research focuses on understanding the mechanisms underlying the nuclear reactions that are used to study rare isotopes. Nuclear reactions can be used to extract the properties of nuclei, but they have to be modeled accurately in order to obtain reliable quantitative results. His experimental program aims at validating the reaction models using specially designed experiments.
Another part of his research involves designing and using novel experimental methods and technology to push the limits of observation on rare isotopes. Low-energy reactions performed on rare isotopes are challenging because reaction products have very low energy and can emerge from a solid target only if it is extremely thin. This reduces the chances that a nuclear reaction can occur and limits the observation of nuclear phenomena. Developing an “active target,” which is a target and a detector at the same time can mitigate this limitation. This opens the door to a vast amount of reactions that can be performed on rare isotopes.
“I feel very honored,” said Bazin of being elected as an APS fellow. “It means that my colleagues acknowledge the work I have done so far as significant and having an impact in the field of nuclear physics.”
Bazin earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the University of Caen in France. He is an adjunct professor at MSU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Previously, he was a tenured research physicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Great Heavy-Ions National Accelerator in France. Bazin is a member of the American Physical Society, an editor at Nature’s Scientific Reports, and co-organized a 2017 ExtreMe Matter Institute workshop titled “Direct reactions and nuclear structure: the need for a consistent theoretical treatment of structure and reactions.” He has authored 390 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and has been published in 267 conference proceedings.
”Daniel’s research is key to the future discoveries at Facility for Rare Isotope Beams,” said FRIB Laboratory Director Thomas Glasmacher. “Congratulations to Daniel for earning this well-deserved honor.”
The National Science Foundation’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory is a center for nuclear and accelerator science research and education. It is the nation’s premier scientific user facility dedicated to the production and study of rare isotopes.
MSU is establishing FRIB as a new scientific user facility for the Office of Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Under construction on campus and operated by MSU, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry.