A recent paper based on the research work of Prof. Umesh Garg and his collaborators (M. Itoh et al., Phys. Rev. C 84, 054308) was featured in the APS journal Physics with a Viewpoint.
Physics highlights a selection of papers from the Physical Review journals. In consultation with expert scientists, the editors choose these papers for their importance and/or intrinsic interest. To highlight these papers, Physics features three kinds of articles. Viewpoints are commentaries written by active researchers, who are asked to explain the results to physicists in other subfields.
Prof. Garg’s work, carried out at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University, Japan, has provided evidence for the long-suspected existence of an excited rotational state in the nucleus 12C, related to the Hoyle state, which is crucial in the formation of 12C and, consequently, of all life as we know it. In the Viewpoint, Prof. Hans O. U. Fynbo of Aarhus University in Denmark, and Prof. Martin Freer of Birmingham University in UK, have described the importance of this result and lauded the technique used in this work as providing convincing evidence for this crucial state.
Prof. Garg has had a longstanding and highly successful research program based at RCNP, Osaka. Many students, including Notre Dame undergraduates and REU students, have traveled with him to Osaka to participate in these experiments.
