Roland Diehl

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©  Roland Diehl,
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last update 25Feb2022 by rod

...more about

my science themes

(for all curious people, rather that just the specialists)

How can we understand far-away cosmic objects and the physical processes in their interiors? This is the general theme of astrophysics. My own interests herein emphasize the processes related to atomic nuclei and their physics. Atomic nuclei are aggregates of neutrons and protons, the elementary particles part-taking in the nuclear forces. As created from the initial event of our cosmos, the big bang, neutrons and protons have later combined and formed a variety of compositions (atomic nuclei). This "cosmic evolution of material composition" is far from understood, yet provides the variety of the chemical elements which we and our world is made of, such as Carbon, Oxygen, Silicon, Iron, Gold, or Uranium.
Cosmic extremes in the interiors of stars and of supernovae (their explosions) are violent enough to enable transformations of nuclei, the generation of new nuclei. Such environments are my main interest. This implies that interaction energies of MeV, or ~a thousand times that of atomic-electron related processes such as chemical burning or optical light, are in the main focus. At such energies, atomic nuclei are combined into new species, and electromagnetic light at high energies, called gamma rays, are the messengers of such processes. We now operate telescopes in space, which record such radiation from distant sources. The analysis and interpretation of such data, in the context of theories of astrophysical sources and processes, and of observations from other messengers, are my interests pursued in my research.

A variety of publications which I made over the past years are written in a way which  make these themes accessible to interested people other than experts. Here is a collection:

Most-relevant for a broader audience:
  • A series of ~7 minute video clips (in youtube) on nuclear astrophysics,
    called     external Astronuclear Nibbles (2022) (No. 7 on gamma-ray aspects; RD)

  • A brief (external video (in german, local video here) on cosmic nucleosynthesis (from a "Campus Talk" on the origin of the elements: "Woher kommt das Eisen in unserem Blut", Dec 2015, ARD-Alpha)

  • An article (external here)  in the German Physik Journal (the magazine of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft) presents the astrophysics that uses radioactive isotopes.
  • A booklet on the science field of external"Nuclear Astrophysics" (EU-COST ChETEC 2021)
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