Fundamental Interactions, Nuclear Masses, Astrophysics, and QCD

Abstract

During his long and varied career, Robert Tribble has made important contributions in many areas of nuclear physics. He has set new limits on the existence of second-class currents, lepton-flavor violation, and right-handed interactions. He optimized the use of the (''He,*He) reaction to determine nuclear masses and study charge-dependent effects in nuclei. He has developed a new indirect procedure to determine astrophysical reaction rates and applied it to study important nuclear reactions that occur in our sun, in massive stars, and in novae. He has explored anti-quark distributions in nucleons and nuclei, and the polarization of gluons in the nucleon. A brief overview of Bob Tribble's many accomplishments is presented.Study of the fundamental interactions has been a recurring theme over the course of Bob Tribble's career. In the early 1970's, his dissertation research involved a search for second-class currents in nuclear beta decay. During the 1980's and '90's, he searched for the lepton-flavor violating decay |i -> ey. For the past decade, he has performed a sensitive search for right-handed interactions in normal muon decay.