A systematic study of neutron-hole strength in the N = 81 nuclei 137Ba, 139Ce, 141Nd and 143Sm is reported. The single-neutron removal reactions (p,d) and (3He,4He) were measured at energies of 23 and 34 MeV, respectively. Spectroscopic factors were extracted from measured cross sections through a distorted-wave Born approximation analysis and centroids of single-particle strength have been established. The change in these centroid energies as a function of proton number have been compared to calculations of the monopole shift for the s1/2 and h11/2 orbitals, where the majority of the strength has been observed. Significant fragmentation of strength was observed for the d and g7/2 orbitals, particularly for the latter orbital which is deeply bound, with summed strengths that indicate a significant amount lies outside of the measured excitation energy range.

Background: Properties of proton-unbound S-31 states determine the P-30(p, gamma) S-31 reaction rate, which has a significant impact on explosive hydrogen burning in classical novae and type-I x-ray bursts. Despite several previous studies, uncertainties still remain with respect to the nuclear structure of S-31 near the proton threshold. Purpose: The level structure of S-31 has been presently investigated via a charged-particle spectroscopy experiment using the S-32(p, d) S-31 reaction. Method: Deuterons corresponding to S-31 excited states with 3.285 <= E-x <= 10.8 MeV were momentum analyzed via an Enge split-pole spectrograph at six laboratory angles between 10 degrees and 62 degrees. Differential cross sections of the S-32(p, d)S-31 reaction were measured at E-p = 34.5 MeV. Distorted-wave Born approximation calculations were performed to constrain the spin-parity assignments of several of the observed levels. Results: We have detected 72 excited states of S-31, out of which 17 are within the astrophysical region of interest corresponding to the temperature range of 0.1-1.5 GK. We have resolved the discrepancy in the spin and parity of an excited state with E-x = 6542 keV, showing that is it not J(pi) = 3/2(-), and therefore the contribution of this state to the P-30(p, gamma) reaction rate is likely much less significant than previously thought owing to the larger angular-momentum transfer required to populate this excited state. Moreover, our measurement results help consolidate the spin-parity assignments for the 6377 and 6636 keV states in S-31. Conclusions: This work presents the most comprehensive spin-parity assignments to date from a single-neutron transfer reaction on S-32 to S-31 excited states in the region between 6 to 7 MeV excitation energy. This region is significant for the determination of the P-30(p, gamma)S-30 reaction rate over the temperatures characteristic of explosive hydrogen burning in novae.

Background: Properties of proton-unbound $^{31}\mathrm{S}$ states determine the $^{30}\mathrm{P}(p,\ensuremath{\gamma})^{31}\mathrm{S}$ reaction rate, which has a significant impact on explosive hydrogen burning in classical novae and type-I x-ray bursts. Despite several previous studies, uncertainties still remain with respect to the nuclear structure of $^{31}\mathrm{S}$ near the proton threshold.Purpose: The level structure of $^{31}\mathrm{S}$ has been presently investigated via a charged-particle spectroscopy experiment using the $^{32}\mathrm{S}(p,d)^{31}\mathrm{S}$ reaction.Method: Deuterons corresponding to $^{31}\mathrm{S}$ excited states with $3.285\ensuremath{\le}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{E}_{x}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\le}10.8$ MeV were momentum analyzed via an Enge split-pole spectrograph at six laboratory angles between ${10}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ and ${62}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$. Differential cross sections of the $^{32}\mathrm{S}(p,d)^{31}\mathrm{S}$ reaction were measured at ${E}_{p}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}=34.5$ MeV. Distorted-wave Born approximation calculations were performed to constrain the spin-parity assignments of several of the observed levels.Results: We have detected 72 excited states of $^{31}\mathrm{S}$, out of which 17 are within the astrophysical region of interest corresponding to the temperature range of 0.1--1.5 GK. We have resolved the discrepancy in the spin and parity of an excited state with ${E}_{x}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}=6542$ keV, showing that is it not ${J}^{\ensuremath{\pi}}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}=3/{2}^{\ensuremath{-}}$, and therefore the contribution of this state to the $^{30}\mathrm{P}(p,\ensuremath{\gamma})$ reaction rate is likely much less significant than previously thought owing to the larger angular-momentum transfer required to populate this excited state. Moreover, our measurement results help consolidate the spin-parity assignments for the 6377 and 6636 keV states in $^{31}\mathrm{S}$.Conclusions: This work presents the most comprehensive spin-parity assignments to date from a single-neutron transfer reaction on $^{32}\mathrm{S}$ to $^{31}\mathrm{S}$ excited states in the region between 6 to 7 MeV excitation energy. This region is significant for the determination of the $^{30}\mathrm{P}(p,\ensuremath{\gamma})^{30}\mathrm{S}$ reaction rate over the temperatures characteristic of explosive hydrogen burning in novae.

LUX (Large Underground Xenon) is a dark matter direct detection experiment deployed at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD, operating a 370 kg dual-phase xenon TPC. Results of the first WIMP search run were presented in late 2013, for the analysis of 85.3 live-days with a fiducial volume of 118 kg, taken during the period of April to August 2013. The experiment exhibited a sensitivity to spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering with a minimum upper limit on the cross section of 7.6×10−46cm2 at a WIMP mass of 33 GeV/c2, becoming the world's leading WIMP search result, in conflict with several previous claimed hints of discovery.

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment aims to detect rare low-energy interactions from Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The radiogenic backgrounds in the LUX detector have been measured and compared with Monte Carlo simulation. Measurements of LUX high-energy data have provided direct constraints on all background sources contributing to the background model. The expected background rate from the background model for the 85.3day WIMP search run is (2.6±0.2stat±0.4sys)×10-3 events keVee-1kg-1day-1 in a 118kg fiducial volume. The observed background rate is (3.6±0.4stat)×10-3 events keVee-1kg-1day-1, consistent with model projections. The expectation for the radiogenic background in a subsequent one-year run is presented.

We present the status and prospects of the LUX experiment, which employs approximately 300 kg of two-phase xenon to search for WIMP dark matter interactions. The LUX detector was commissioned at the surface laboratory of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD, between December 2011 and February 2012 and the detector has been operating underground since January, 2013. These proceedings review the results of the commissioning run as well as the status of underground data-taking through the summer of 2013.

The LUX detector is currently in operation at the Davis Campus at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD to directly search for WIMP dark matter. Knowing the type and rate of backgrounds is critical in a rare, low energy event search, and LUX was designed, constructed, and deployed to mitigate backgrounds, both internal and external. An important internal background are decays of radon and its daughters. These consist of alpha decays, which are easily tagged and are a tracer of certain backgrounds, and beta decays, some of which are not as readily tagged and present a background for the WIMP search. We report on studies of alpha decay and discuss implications for the WIMP search.

The LUX (Large Underground Xenon) experiment aims at the direct detection of dark matter particles via their collisions with xenon nuclei. The 370kg two-phase liquid xenon time projection chamber measures simultaneously the scintillation and ionization from interactions in the target. The ratio of these two signals provides very good discrimination between potential nuclear recoil and electronic recoil signals to search for WIMP-nucleon scattering. The LUX detector operates at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota, USA) since February 2013. First results were presented in late 2013 setting the world׳s most stringent limits on WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-sections over a wide range of WIMP masses. A 300 day run beginning in 2014 will further improve the sensitivity and new calibration techniques will reduce systematics for the WIMP signal search.

Author(s): Akerib, DS; Araujo, HM; Bai, X; Bailey, AJ; Balajthy, J; Bernard, E; Bernstein, A; Bradley, A; Byram, D; Cahn, SB; Carmona-Benitez, MC; Chan, C; Chapman, JJ; Chiller, AA; Chiller, C; Coffey, T; Currie, A; De Viveiros, L; Dobi, A; Dobson, J; Druszkiewicz, E; Edwards, B; Faham, CH; Fiorucci, S; Flores, C; Gaitskell, RJ; Gehman, VM; Ghag, C; Gibson, KR; Gilchriese, MGD; Hall, C; Hertel, SA; Horn, M; Huang, DQ; Ihm, M; Jacobsen, RG; Kazkaz, K; Knoche, R; Larsen, NA; Lee, C; Lenardo, B; Lesko, KT; Lindote, A; Lopes, MI; Malling, DC; Man-Nino, R; McKinsey, DN; Mei, DM; Mock, J; Moongweluwan, M; Morad, J; Murphy, ASJ; Nehrkorn, C; Nelson, H; Neves, F; Ott, RA; Pangilinan, M; Parker, PD; Pease, EK; Pech, K; Phelps, P; Reichhart, L; Shutt, T; Silva, C; Solovov, VN; Sorensen, P; O'Sullivan, K; Sumner, TJ; Szydagis, M; Tay-Lor, D; Tennyson, B; Tiedt, DR; Tripathi, M; Uvarov, S; Verbus, JR; Walsh, N; Webb, R; White, JT; Witherell, MS; Wolfs, FLH; Woods, M; Zhang, C | Abstract: The search for dark matter reaches back generations and remains one of the most compelling endeavors in the hunt for physics beyond the Standard Model. Experiments attempting to directly detect WIMP dark matter have made re-markable progress in increasing sensitivity to elastic scattering of WIMPs on nuclei. The LUX experiment is a 370-kg, two-phase, xenon TPC currently running at SURF, 4850 feet below Lead, SD. LUX recently completed its first science run and was sensitive to spin independent WIMP scattering at cross sections below 10-45 cm2 for WIMP masses of approximately 20 to 80 GeV. Preparations for the final science run of LUX are currently underway, with final results expected in 2015. We will present results from and current status of the LUX experiment, as well as plans for a follow-on, multi-ton-scale xenon experiment at SURF.

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is a dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Lead, South Dakota). The LUX cryostat was filled for the first time in the underground laboratory in February 2013. We report results of the first WIMP search data set, taken during the period from April to August 2013, presenting the analysis of 85.3 live days of data with a fiducial volume of 118 kg. A profile-likelihood analysis technique shows our data to be consistent with the background-only hypothesis, allowing 90% confidence limits to be set on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering with a minimum upper limit on the cross section of 7.6 × 10(-46) cm(2) at a WIMP mass of 33 GeV/c(2). We find that the LUX data are in disagreement with low-mass WIMP signal interpretations of the results from several recent direct detection experiments.

LUX, the world's largest dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber, with a fiducial target mass of 118 kg and 10,091 kg-days of exposure thus far, is currently the most sensitive direct dark matter search experiment. The initial null-result limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross-section was released in October 2013, with a primary scintillation threshold of 2 phe, roughly 3 keVnr for LUX. The detector has been deployed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, and is the first experiment to achieve a limit on the WIMP cross-section lower than $10^{-45}$ cm$^{2}$. Here we present a more in-depth discussion of the novel energy scale employed to better understand the nuclear recoil light and charge yields, and of the calibration sources, including the new internal tritium source. We found the LUX data to be in conflict with low-mass WIMP signal interpretations of other results.

J.P. Schiffer, ∗ S.J. Freeman, J.A. Clark, C. Deibel, C.R. Fitzpatrick, S. Gros, A. Heinz, D. Hirata, 5 C.L. Jiang, B.P. Kay, A. Parikh, P.D. Parker, K.E. Rehm, A.C.C. Villari, V. Werner, and C. Wrede Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439 University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL,U.K. Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 GANIL (IN2P3/CNRS -DSM/CEA), B.P. 55027 14076 Caen Cedex 5, France The Open University, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K. (Dated: June 21, 2013)

The single-neutron properties of N = 51 nuclei have been studied with the (d,p )a nd (α, 3 He) reactions, at beam energies of 15 and 50 MeV respectively, on 88 Sr, 90 Zr, and 92 Mo targets. The light reaction products were momentum analyzed using a conventional magnetic spectrometer. Additionally, the 2 H( 86 Kr,p) reaction was measured at a beam energy of 10 MeV/u, where outgoing light ions were analyzed using a helical-orbit spectrometer. Absolute cross sections and angular distributions corresponding to the population of different final states in the heavy product were obtained for each reaction. Spectroscopic factors were extracted and centroids of the single-particle strength were deduced. The observations appear consistent with calculations based on an evolution of single-particle structure driven by the nucleon-nucleon forces acting between valence protons and neutrons.

The uncertainty in the 29P(p,gamma)30S reaction rate over the temperature range of 0.1 - 1.3 GK was previously determined to span ~4 orders of magnitude due to the uncertain location of two previously unobserved 3+ and 2+ resonances in the 4.7 - 4.8 MeV excitation region in 30S. Therefore, the abundances of silicon isotopes synthesized in novae, which are relevant for the identification of presolar grains of putative nova origin, were uncertain by a factor of 3. To investigate the level structure of 30S above the proton threshold (4394.9(7) keV), a charged-particle spectroscopy and an in-beam gamma-ray spectroscopy experiments were performed. Differential cross sections of the 32S(p,t)30S reaction were measured at 34.5 MeV. Distorted wave Born approximation calculations were performed to constrain the spin-parity assignments of the observed levels. An energy level scheme was deduced from gamma-gamma coincidence measurements using the 28Si(3He,n-gamma)30S reaction. Spin-parity assignments based on measurements of gamma-ray angular distributions and gamma-gamma directional correlation from oriented nuclei were made for most of the observed levels of 30S. As a result, the resonance energies corresponding to the excited states in 4.5 MeV - 6 MeV region, including the two astrophysically important states predicted previously, are measured with significantly better precision than before. The uncertainty in the rate of the 29P(p,gamma)30S reaction is substantially reduced over the temperature range of interest. Finally, the influence of this rate on the abundance ratios of silicon isotopes synthesized in novae are obtained via 1D hydrodynamic nova simulations.

The valence neutron composition of the ${}^{130}$Te and ${}^{130}$Xe ground states has been studied with a view to constraining calculations of the nuclear matrix element for the neutrinoless double-$\ensuremath{\beta}$ decay of ${}^{130}$Te. Single-neutron adding and removing reactions on ${}^{128,130}$Te and ${}^{130,132}$Xe have been used to probe the vacancy of the $0{g}_{7/2}$, $1{d}_{5/2}$, $1{d}_{3/2}$, $2{s}_{1/2}$, and $0{h}_{11/2}$ orbitals. The change in the vacancy of these orbitals, obtained through a self-consistent determination of spectroscopic factors utilizing the Macfarlane-French sum rules, for ${}^{130}\mathrm{Te}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{}^{130}\mathrm{Xe}$ is shared only between the $d$, ${s}_{1/2}$, and ${h}_{11/2}$ orbitals, with the ${g}_{7/2}$ playing no significant role. This is in disagreement with recent calculations within both the quasiparticle random-phase approximation and shell-model frameworks, which show a role for the ${g}_{7/2}$ orbital that should have been observable. The neutron pairing properties of ${}^{130}$Xe have also been explored through the ${}^{132}$Xe($p$,$t$) reaction showing no evidence for pairing vibrations.

Measurements of neutron-adding, neutron-removing, and proton-adding reactions were carried out for the four stable even Ni isotopes. Particular attention was paid to obtaining precise values of the cross sections at the peaks of the angular distributions. Tests with sum rules for the neutron data indicate that the results are self-consistent at the level of a few tenths of a nucleon. Data on proton-adding reactions were also obtained and analyzed with a slightly different method-while these data are also consistent, the ambiguities are larger. The occupancies of the neutron orbits derived from the data, the proton vacancies, and the energy centroids of the neutron, neutron-hole, and proton single-particle excitations are obtained. The data also provide some estimate about the closure of the 0 f(7/2) shell. The results are compared to shell-model calculations and may serve as a reference point for future exploration. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.87.034306

B. P. Kay,1,* T. Bloxham,2 S. A. McAllister,3 J. A. Clark,4 C. M. Deibel,4,5,† S. J. Freedman,2 S. J. Freeman,3 K. Han,2 A. M. Howard,3,‡ A. J. Mitchell,3,§ P. D. Parker,6 J. P. Schiffer,4 D. K. Sharp,3 and J. S. Thomas3 1Department of Physics, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom 2Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA 3School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom 4Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA 5Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA 6A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA (Received 13 November 2012; published 22 January 2013)

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) collaboration has designed and constructed a dual-phase xenon detector, in order to conduct a search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), a leading dark matter candidate. The goal of the LUX detector is to clearly detect (or exclude) WIMPS with a spin independent cross-section per nucleon of 2 x 10(-46) cm(2), equivalent to similar to 1 event 100 kg month in the inner 100-kg fiducial volume (FV) of the 370-kg detector. The overall background goals are set to have <1 background events characterized as possible WIMPs in the FV in 300 days of running.This paper describes the design and construction of the LUX detector. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

If a reliable measurement of a neutrinoless double beta decay (0v2β) rate is made, the effective neutrino masses can be determined from the nuclear matrix element. Theoretical calculations of nuclear matrix elements, however, show some disagreement. To test the suitability of various theoretical models, they should be benchmarked against experimentally measured nuclear properties, such as the ground-state distribution of nucleons in the parent-daughter nuclei, and how they change as a result of the decay process. Single neutron-adding reactions have been performed on the 0v2β candidate nucleus, 130Te. The Macfarlane-French sum rules have then been used to determine the single-particle vacancies. Some quasi-random phase approximations (QRPA) can greatly simplify theoretical calculations by describing the ground state of even-even nuclei using a BCS wavefunction. This assumption has been tested using two-neutron removal, (p,t) reactions. The BCS wavefunction appeared to be a valid approximation for valence neutrons.