ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The astrophysical p-process, the stellar production mechanism of the heavy, proton rich isotopes (p-isotopes), is one of the least studied processes in nucleosynthesis. The astrophysical site(s) for the p-process could not yet be clearly identified. In order to reproduce the natural abundances of the p-isotopes, the p-process models must take into account a huge nuclear reaction network. A precise knowledge of the rate of the nuclear reactions in this network is essential for a reliable abundance calculation and for a clear assignment of the astrophysical site(s). For lack of experimental data the nuclear physics inputs for the reaction networks are based on statistical model calculations. These calculations are largely untested in the mass and energy range relevant to the p-process and the uncertainties in the reaction rate values result in a correspondingly uncertain prediction of the p-isotope abundances. Therefore, experiments aiming at the determination of reaction rates for the p-process are of great importance. In this project nuclear reaction cross section measurements will be carried out in the mass and energy range of p-process to check the reliability of the statistical model calculations and to put the p-process models on a more reliable base. The accelerators of the Institute of Nuclear Research in Debrecen, Hungary provide the necessary basis for such studies. The p-process model calculations are especially sensitive to the rates of reactions involving alpha particles and heavy nuclei. Because of technical difficulties, so far there are practically no experimental data available on such reactions and the uncertainty in these reaction rates is presently one of the biggest contributions to the uncertainty of p-isotope abundance calculations. With the help of the ERC grant the alpha-induced reaction cross sections can be measured on heavy isotopes for the first time, which could contribute to a better understanding of the astrophysical p-process.

750 000 €

Start date: 2008-07-01, End date: 2013-06-30

The project is aimed at funding a multi-disciplinary laboratory on nonlinear optics and photonics in soft-colloidal materials and on “complex lightwave systems”. A team of talented young researchers, divided among experiments, theory, parallel computation and nano-fabrication is involved. The proposed research will foster several breakthrough discoveries from soft-matter to biophysics, from nonlinear and integrated optics to the science of complexity and cryptography. The underlying vision is driven by the physics of complex systems, those displaying a large number of thermodynamically equivalent states and emergent properties. There are 4 original and high-impact activities, which explore applicative potentialities: 1) sub-wavelength light filaments in soft- and bio-matter; 2) lasers in soft-matter and bio-tissues; 3) control of soft-matter lasers by light filaments; 4) complex lightwave systems, encryption by nano-structured disordered lasers. Activity 1 will lead to ultra-thin re-addressable light beams (sub-wavelength spatial solitons) propagating in soft- and bio-matter that can be used in laser-surgery, matter manipulation and able to guide high power laser pulses; activity 2 attains novel structural diagnostic techniques in bone tissue surpassing limits of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, and assesses the field of lasers in soft-materials; activity 3 will demonstrate the control of self-organization processes in soft-matter by light filaments probed by laser emission; activity 4 is based on specific features mutuated from spin-glass theory, and will realize a novel cryptographic technique superior to chaotic systems in terms of security. Activity 1 and 2 are propaedeutic to the others. The team is composed by the Principal Investigator (P.I.), 4 post-doctoral researchers and 3 Ph.D. students. The budget will be used for paying the P.I., two post-doctoral positions, laser sources, high performance computing facilities, and instrumentation.

1 085 000 €

Start date: 2008-05-01, End date: 2013-04-30

My project is to write a history of the formation of Islam using the vastly important but largely neglected papyri from Egypt. Until the introduction of paper in the 10th C., papyrus was the Mediterranean world’s primary writing material. Thousands of papyrus documents survive, preserving a minutely detailed transcription of daily life, as well as the only contemporary records of Islam’s rise and first wave of conquests. As an historian and papyrologist, my career has been dedicated to developing the potential of this extraordinary resource. The prevailing model of Islam’s formation is based on sources composed by a literary élite some 150 years after the events they describe. The distortions this entails are especially problematic since it was in these first two centuries that Islam’s institutional, social and religious framework developed and stabilised. To form a meaningful understanding of this development requires tackling the contemporary documentary record, as preserved in the papyri. Yet the technical difficulties presented by these mostly unpublished and uncatalogued documents have largely barred their use by historians. This project is a systematic attempt to address this critical problem. The project has three stages: 1) a stocktaking of unedited Arabic, Coptic and Greek papyri; 2) the editing of a corpus of the most significant papyri; 3) the presentation of a synthetic historical analysis through scholarly publications and a dedicated website. By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character and ambition of Muslim state competency at the time of the Islamic conquest; the steps – military, administrative and religious – by which it extended its reach and what this tells us about the origins and evolution of Muslim ideas of rulership, religion and pow

1 000 000 €

Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28

In a recent series of experiments, it has been shown that polar molecules can be decelerated, bunched, cooled, and trapped using time-varying electric fields. These experiments demonstrate an unprecedented level of control over molecules, which enables a variety of applications of great scientific interest. Here, I propose to use these techniques to create a molecular fountain. In this fountain, the first of its kind, polar molecules are decelerated, cooled, and subsequently launched upwards some 10-50 cm before falling back under gravity, thereby passing a microwave cavity or laser beam twice – as they fly up and as they fall back down. The effective interrogation time in such a Ramsey type measurement scheme includes the entire flight time between the two traversals through the driving field, which can be up to a second. This long interrogation time will allow for extreme precision measurements on molecular structure to a level at which fundamental physics theories can be tested. I will use the inversion frequency in ammonia around 23 GHz as a test case. This transition is very well studied and was used in the first ‘atomic’ clock and the first demonstration of a MASER. The fountain should make it possible to measure the inversion frequency with a relative accuracy of 10^{-12}–10^{-14}; that is more than a thousand fold improvement as compared to the best previous measurement. Besides serving as a proof-of-principle, this measurement may be used as a test of the time-variation of fundamental constants – an issue that has profound implications on how we understand the universe. The inversion frequency in ammonia is determined by the tunneling rate of the protons through the barrier between the two equivalent configurations of the molecule, and is exponentially dependent on the proton mass. By monitoring the inversion frequency over a period of a few years, a possible variation of the proton-electron mass ratio can be constrained or measured.

1 100 000 €

Start date: 2008-08-01, End date: 2013-07-31