Prof. Filomena Nunes
National Superconducting Cycltron Laboratory and Department of Physicis and Astronomy Michigan State University
Curator and author
Articles sponsored or reviewed
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Curriculum Vitae
My interest in nuclear physics dates back to the early nineties when, as an undergraduate, I met Antonio Fonseca. He introduced me to few-body methods and basic scattering theory. I then followed on to England to do my PhD in Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey with Ian Thompson and Ron Johnson. I was fascinated with the halo phenomena and my PhD work consisted in developing a three-body model including core excitation for halo nuclei. After my PhD, I gradually got more involved with reaction theory for studying exotic nuclei, first focusing on breakup reactions. My experience with the Continuum Discretized Coupled Channel method (CDCC) dates back to 1998, when we performed the first application of the method to a nucleus on the proton drip-line (the method was originally developed for deuteron breakup). After my post-doc in Lisbon, I became a professor at Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Porto. I initiated a fruitful collaboration with Akram Mukhamedzhanov, and got interested in transfer reactions in connection to astrophysics. In 2003 I moved to the U.S. and have since been working at Michigan State. My interests continue to grow and expand within the area of nuclear reactions and their use for understanding the structure of rare isotopes. The conducting motivation continues to be to bridge the gap between few-body models and microscopic models, controlling uncertainties and improving accuracy.
Education
Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal, Physics Engineering, 1992 University of Surrey, Guildford, England, Ph.D. 1995
Professional Experience
2009- Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy and NSCL, MSU. 2003-2009 Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy and NSCL, MSU. 1999-2004 Assistant Professor, Physics Department, Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST). 1998-2003 Associate Professor, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal 1996-1998 Research fellow, CENTRA (Centre for Astrophysics), Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal. Research fellow, University of Surrey, England.
Research Expertise
Few-body methods for reactions: coupled channels for elastic, transfer and breakup processes, continuum discretization methods, including core excitation, many-body effect in reactions.
Few-body methods for the structure of light nuclei: coupled channel methods, Pauli-projection methods, Hyperspherical method, Sturmian method, variational Monte Carlo methods.
Other fields of interest
diversity in nuclear physics; pedagogical methods for teaching physics.
Boards and Committees
RIA Theory Group Executive Committee (2004-2005) Advisory editor to Physical Review Letters (2007- 2009) FRIB Theory Group Executive Committee (2010-2013) Institute for nuclear theory advisory board (2010-2013)
Selected publications
Core Excitation in Three Body Systems: Application to 12Be; F. M. Nunes, J.A. Christley, I. J. Thompson, R.C. Johnson and V.D. Efros; Nucl. Phys. A 609 (1996) 43.
Multistep effect in sub-Coulomb breakup; F.M. Nunes and I.J. Thompson; Phys. Rev. C 59 (1999) 2652.
Calculations of three-body observables in 8B breakup, J. A. Tostevin, F. M. Nunes, and I. J. Thompson Phys. Rev. C 63, 024617 (2001).
Reaction models to probe the structure of light exotic nuclei; J.S. Alhalili and F.M. Nunes; J. Phys. G 29 (2003) R89 Topical Review.
Combined method to extract spectroscopic information, A. M.Mukhamedzhanov and F. M. Nunes; Phys. Rev. C 72, 017602 (2005).
Extended continuum discretized coupled channels method: Core excitation in the breakup of exotic nuclei; N. C. Summers, F. M. Nunes, and I. J. Thompson Phys. Rev. C 74, 014606 (2006).
Three-body description of direct nuclear reactions: comparison with CDCC, A. Deltuva, A.M. Moro, E. Cravo, F.M. Nunes and A.C. Fonseca; Phys. Rev. C 76 (2007) 064602.
Benchmark on neutron capture extracted from (d,p) reactions, A.M. Mukhamedzhanov, F.M. Nunes and P. Mohr; Phys. Rev. C 77 (2008) 051601.
The magic nature of 132Sn explored through s.p. states in 133Sn, K. L. Jones et al., Nature 465 (2010) 454.
