LOREX (LORandite EXperiment) is a geochemical project addressing the solar proton-proton neutrino flux for the period of 4.31(2) Ma from the reaction Tl-205 + v(e) -> (205)pb + e(-) with a very low threshold (52 keV) for solar pp-neutrino capture. A decisive step for this purpose is to obtain the precise, background-corrected ratio of Pb-205/Tl-205 in the mineral lorandite (TlAsS2) as geochemical detector occurring in the ore deposit of Allchar in Macedonia. This study presents a report on the excavation of lorandite bearing ore from adit P-21 of the ore body Crven Dol as well as on the separation of pure lorandite from the raw ore. A detailed mineralogical and chemical investigation of the separated lorandite is performed with special regard to the question of its use as detector for solar pp-neutrinos.

Highly charged radioactive ions can be stored for extended periods of time in storage rings which allows for precision measurements of their decay modes. The straightforward motivation for performing such studies is that fully ionised nuclei or few-electron ions can be viewed as clean quantum-mechanical systems, in which the interactions of the many electrons can be either excluded or treated precisely. Thus, the influence of the electron shell on the decay probability can be investigated. Another important motivation is stellar nucleosynthesis, which proceeds at high temperatures and the involved atoms are therefore highly ionised. Presented here is a compact review of the relevant experiments conducted at heavy-ion storage rings. Furthermore, we outline the perspectives for future experiments at new-generation storage-ring facilities.

This work presents a direct measurement of the Ru-96(p,gamma)Rh-97 cross section via a novel technique using a storage ring, which opens opportunities for reaction measurements on unstable nuclei. A proof-of-principle experiment was performed at the storage ring ESR at GSI in Darmstadt, where circulating Ru-96 ions interacted repeatedly with a hydrogen target. The Ru-96(p,gamma)Rh-97 cross section between 9 and 11 MeV has been determined using two independent normalization methods. As key ingredients in Hauser-Feshbach calculations, the gamma-ray strength function as well as the level density model can be pinned down with the measured (p,gamma) cross section. Furthermore, the proton optical potential can be optimized after the uncertainties from the gamma-ray strength function and the level density have been removed. As a result, a constrained Ru-96(p,gamma)Rh-97 reaction rate over a wide temperature range is recommended for p-process network calculations.

Heavy-ion storage rings can be employed for nuclear astrophysics studies. Over the last two decades the experimental storage ring ESR at GSI has played a central role for such investigations. Experimental possibilities will be extended with the commissioning of the low-energy storage ring CRYRING, which is being constructed presently behind the ESR. In this contribution we sketch several examples of possible experiments, which can be pursued at GSI by using the unique capabilities offered by ESR and CRYRING still before the new-generation FAIR facility comes into operation.

During the last two decades, ion storage-cooler rings have been proven as powerful devices for addressing precision experiments in the realm of atomic physics, nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics. Most important, in particular for stored unstable nuclides, is the unrivalled capability of ion cooler-rings to generate brilliant beams of highest phase–space density owing to sophisticated cooling techniques, and to store them for extended periods of time by preserving their charge state. This report focuses on nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics experiments with in-flight produced exotic ions that were injected into storage-cooler rings. Those experiments were conducted within the last decade mainly at the only operating facilities that are capable to provide and to store exotic ions, namely the ESR in Darmstadt, Germany and the CSRe-ring in Lanzhou, China. The majority of nuclear physics experiments performed at these equipments concerns ground-state properties of nuclei far from stability, such as masses and lifetimes. The rich harvest of these measurements is presented. In particular it is shown that storage-cooler rings are ideal, if not the only, devices where two-body beta decays of exotic highly-charged ions, such as bound-state beta decay and orbital electron capture, can be studied in every detail, based on "single-ion decay spectroscopy". Furthermore, experiments at the border between atomic and nuclear physics are discussed which render valuable information on nuclear properties by exploiting one of the most precise tools of atomic spectroscopy on stored ions, the "dielectronic recombination". Ion storage rings with cooled exotic beams and equipped with thin internal gas targets deliver also unrivalled opportunities for addressing with highest precision key reactions in the fields of nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure. First very promising experiments exploring the potential of ion cooler-rings in this realm have been already conducted. However, in view of the small nuclear cross sections, many of fervently desired experiments in this field will still suffer from the insufficient number of exotic ions that can be delivered and stored at the time being. The realistic hope on a breakthrough in this field is based on the ion storage rings to come, with their estimated improvements in the intensity of exotic ion beams by many orders of magnitude.

A new method is proposed to determine half-lives and branching ratios of β -delayed neutron emitters, especially those beyond N=126 that are relevant for the r-process.The existing storage ring ESR or the future ring CR at GSI would be employed to store and cool the mother nuclei.The decay half-life and the neutron emission probability could be deduced from the detection of the mother and decay daughter ions with Schottky pick-ups and a particle detector in contrast to the standard method via detection of β -delayed neutrons.This method could be complementary and has the advantage to be independent of the neutron detection efficiency.As candidates for a proof-of-principle tests we suggest the nuclei 211 Hg, 212 Hg, 210 Tl, and 213 Tl which have been investigated in a recent experiment by traditional detection methods.

Precision mass and beta-lifetime measurements conducted at the experimental storage ring ESR in Darmstadt are reviewed. Relativistic radioactive isotopes can be produced by projectile fragmentation and fission reactions, separated in flight by the fragment separator FRS, and injected into the cooler-storage ring ESR. This powerful experimental method gives access to all fragments with half-lives down to the sub-millisecond range. The research potential is demonstrated by several examples of precision mass and lifetime measurements. A particular emphasis is given to the worldwide unique experimental program at the ESR on the studies of bound-state beta(-) decay. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

s are ordered by PACS code, and have been chosen from each subject area to provide an overview of the broad scope covered in the journal. Several abstracts from Comments sections and from two Topical Issues published during 2011 have also been included. Physica Scripta has shown a continuous growth in terms of submitted manuscripts, continuing throughout 2011, and the journal has become an important physics publication because of the high editorial standards. Editorial Board members are active researchers from top institutions, and all submitted papers are subject to rigorous peer review. Reviewers are encouraged to provide constructive feedback that can provide authors with assistance when improving their manuscripts. The final acceptance/rejection decision remains the responsibility of the Editors and currently about two out of three submissions to the journal are rejected. Summing up, the editors of Physica Scripta are active researchers within their topics and ensure expert constructive feedback is provided to the scientific community. I hope that you enjoy the collection and find the articles of great interest as well as beneficial to your own work. ImPact Factor 0.985* *As listed in the 2010 ISI Journal Citation Reports® Fast Publication 25 days Average acceptance-toonline-publication time Cover image: Spinning phenomena and energetics of spherically pulsating patterns in stratified fluids. Top: contour plots of the invariant solution for the stream function; middle: spinning phenomena; bottom: effects of nonlinearity on the spinning phenomenon (adapted from R N Ibragimov and M Dameron 2011 Phys. Scr. 84 015402; artistic impression by Frédérique Swist). Prof. Roger Wäppling Editor-in-Chief, Physica Scripta Physica Scripta ISSN 0031-8949 An international journal for experimental and theoretical physics A journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences published by IOP Publishing Featured in this issue Comments on Astrophysics and Cosmology PAPERS GENERAL PHYSICS 045001 J-Matrix approach for the exponential-cosine-screened Coulomb potential I Nasser, M S Abdelmonem and Afaf Abdel-Hady 045002 Universal quantum computing with nanowire double quantum dots Peng Xue 045003 An analysis of the applications of the modified Kratzer potential Ali Akbar Babaei-Brojeny and Mojtaba Mokari 045004 On a (2+1)-dimensional Madelung system with logarithmic and with Bohm quantum potentials: Ermakov reduction Colin Rogers and Hongli An 045005 On the photon distribution of the two-mode squeezed chaotic state Jun Zhou, Hong-yi Fan and Jun Song 045006 Entanglement swapping of a GHZ state via a GHZ-like state Chia-Wei Tsai and Tzonelih Hwang 045007 Synthetic multicellular oscillatory systems: controlling protein dynamics with genetic circuits Aneta Koseska, Evgenii Volkov and Jürgen Kurths 045008 Magnetic operations: a little fuzzy mechanics? B Mielnik and A Ramı́rez 045009 Optimization analysis of the performance of an irreversible Ericsson refrigeration cycle in the micro/nanoscale Hao Wang, Guoxing Wu and Yueming Fu 045010 Nonclassical properties of the integrability condition of the time-dependent SU(2) quantum system M Sebawe Abdalla and E M Khalil 045011 Protecting the squeezing of a two-level system by detuning in non-Markovian environments Xing Xiao, Mao-Fa Fang and Yan-Min Hu 045012 Combined effects of asymmetry and noise correlation on the noise-enhanced stability phenomenon in a bistable system Dong-Cheng Mei, Zheng-Lin Jia and Can-Jun Wang 045013 Nonadditivity of quantum capacities of quantum multiple-access channels and the butterfly network Peng Huang, Guangqiang He, Jun Zhu and Guihua Zeng 045014 Subquantum nonlocal correlations induced by the background random field Andrei Khrennikov 045015 Cryptanalysis of quantum secret sharing based on GHZ states Xiao-Fen Liu and Ri-Jing Pan 045016 Scalar field reconstruction of power-law entropy-corrected holographic dark energy Esmaeil Ebrahimi and Ahmad Sheykhi 045017 The chaotic atom model via a fractal approximation of motion M Agop, P Nica, S Gurlui, C Focsa, D Magop and Z Borsos 045018 Three-dimensional quantum key distribution in the presence of several eavesdroppers M Daoud and H Ez-zahraouy (Continued on inside back cover) Bibliographic codes CODEN: PHSTBO 84 (4) 045001–048401 (2011) ISSN: 0031-8949 Volume 84 Number 4 October 2011 Pysica Sripta ol 4, No 4 0450–048401 Oober 2011 Volume 84 Number 4 October 2011

In this paper, we discuss the radioactive decay of highly charged ions. There are several motivations for performing this kind of research. One of them is that stellar nucleosynthesis proceeds at high temperatures and therefore the involved atoms are highly ionized. Highly charged ions also offer the possibility of addressing the decay of well-defined quantum-mechanical systems such as, for example, one-electron ions, where all the interactions with other electrons are excluded. These studies can be performed solely at ion storage rings or ion traps, where the high atomic charge states can be preserved for extended periods of time. Although we have focused on experiments conducted at the storage ring ESR of GSI, we have tried to describe the general requirements for such experiments.

In experiments conducted recently at the ion storage-cooler ring ESR of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum, Darmstadt, the two-body orbital electron-capture (EC) decay of stored and cooled hydrogen-like 140Pr and 142Pm ions has been investigated. On top of the exponential decay, periodic modulations with a period T=7s and an amplitude A=0.2 were found for both systems. Tentatively these observations were explained as a kind of “quantum beats”, due to the fact that the electron neutrino, generated in these strict two-body decays, is a flavor—but neither a mass- nor energy- nor momentum-eigenstate. This interpretation has raised many objections. In order to discuss them reasonably, the first section of this paper after the introduction aims for a precise description of the experimental technique and the observables revealed in our experiments. It will be proven that many of the objections are entirely irrelevant, because they are based on a misinterpretation of our experiments and, in particular, of the observables addressed there. In the last section, the actual experimental status will be summarized, including preliminary results of the EC decay of hydrogen-like 122I ions. An outlook is presented on forthcoming experiments which could corroborate or disprove our observations and their explanation.

Decay properties of highly-charged radioactive ions can differ from the ones established for neutral atoms. In this contribution we review recent results and future plans for investigations of two-body beta decays of highly-charged ions. Special attention is given to orbital electron capture decay of few-electron ions.

The electron-capture decay of 180Re has been investigated to search for oscillations in the decay probability as reported from a recent measurement at GSI, Darmstadt. The production period was kept short compared to the reported oscillation period. No such oscillation was observed, indicating that the reported oscillations would not have been observable in a conventional experiment with radioactive atoms in a solid environment but must have to do with the unique conditions in the GSI experiment where hydrogen-like ions are moving independently in a storage ring and decaying directly by a true two-body decay to a long-lived (ground-)state. Our finding could restrict possible theoretical interpretations of the oscillations.

Although the present experimental program at the SISFRS-ESR facilities has been quite successful and has led to several basic discoveries [1], the field of research is expected to be drastically extended by the next-generation facility FAIR [2]. It will consist of a more powerful driver accelerator, a large acceptance in-flight separator Super-FRS [3], and a new storage-cooler ring system specially adapted to the large phase space and short half-lives of the exotic nuclear beams [4]. Within the FAIR framework, ILIMA [5] is an accepted proposal which will be an extension of the present successful program at the FRS-ESR. One goal is to provide pure isomeric beams circulating in the new storage ring system to be used in reactions with the internal target or collision zones with other stored particles as electrons or antiprotons. An important demonstration of the feasibility in this direction has been achieved in the present experiment by scraping off one component of an isobaric doublet recorded with Schottky Mass Spectrometry [6]. The goal was achieved by a precise mechanical scraper at a dispersive plane in the ESR. This mechanical separation in the micrometer range brought the success as demonstrated in Figure 1. The technique which has been applied is very