NuSTAR spokesperson buy-out

The UK is associate member of the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR). The UK's involvement is mainly through the NUclear STructure, Astrophysics, and Reactions (NuSTAR) collaboration. NuSTAR enjoys special status among the four pillars of FAIR, being be the first user of the new facility (the SuperFRS fragment separator will be ready first), with experiments predicted to start at the end of 2027.

The details of the experimental programme for the first years of exploitation is being developed now. The UK has provided equipment such as the AIDA implantation and decay array and the FATIMA LaBr3(Ce) fast-timing array for DESPEC (Decay Spectroscopy); target-recoil detector for R3B (Reactions with Relativistic Radioactive Beams) (ongoing STFC project); CARME for CRYRING (part of APPA, which stands for Atomic, Plasma Physics and Applications); LYCCA (with Sweden) and large contributions to AGATA, the travelling gamma-ray tracking array for HISPEC (High-resolution in-flight spectroscopy).

The aforementioned detector systems are at the core of the different experimental setups, underpinning UK leadership in the addressed science and individual experiments. Some of them can and are used in other labs, for example RIKEN, Japan.

NuSTAR has more than >630 registered scientists, including ~420 senior members with PhD (without Russia). Of these 9% are from the UK (the second largest after Germany). As elected NuSTAR spokesperson I will represent the collaboration at FAIR and beyond.