Recently, the first in-ring nuclear reaction experiment at the Cooler Storage Ring at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL-CSR) has been operated successfully. 

Nuclear matter distribution is one of fundamental properties of nucleus. It plays an important role in studying nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics. Elastic scattering of light ions has been used widely to study the nuclear matter distribution. 

In this work, researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted the experiment of proton elastic scattering on ⁵⁸Ni nuclei at the HIRFL-CSR. Low-energy proton recoils from the elastic collisions were measured with an ultra-high vacuum compatible silicon-strip detector, which was developed by IMP.  

Compared to the experimental results, a good agreement has been achieved with the theoretical predictions in the measured region. 

The results enable new research opportunities for the nuclear matter distribution studies on exotic nuclides by using the in-ring nuclear reaction setup at the HIRFL-CSR facility,  

The work was published in Phys. Rev. C and Nucl. Instrum. Methods A. 

Links to the papers: 

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevC.100.054609 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016890021931277X