Home – Institute for Nuclear Physics

Welcome

on the web pages of the Institute for Nuclear Physics (IKP) at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

We study and teach in the areas of nuclear structure physics, nuclear astrophysics, relativistic heavy-ion physics, plasma physics, astroparticle physics, accelerator physics and related fields in experimental and theoretical groups.

The IKP operates the Superconducting Darmstadt Linear Accelerator (S-DALINAC), various detector and targer laboratories as well as a Theory Center .

The Institute for Nuclear Physics is an essential participant in the research field M+M (Matter and Materials) of the Technical University of Darmstadt. It is an institute within the Department of Physics beside the Institute for Applied Physics and the Institute for Physics of Condensed Matter.

Experimentalists and theoreticians work closely together on a number of scientific topics.

Latest News

Less chaos than expected revealed at HIGS

June 03, 2025

At the nearly-monoenergetic, fully-polarized gamma beam at HIGS, the isotope Nd-150 was irradiated at energies up to the particle threshold (approx. 7 MeV). A new mode of the facility for high beam resolution was used. The surprising result: the decays do not follow the so-called Porter-Thomas distribution, but indicate structure in the chaos of the highly-excited nuclear states, which in turn may also have far-reaching implications for the description of astrophysical processes.
First experimental test of the Ratio Method published

June 02, 2025

We have just published in Phys. Rev. Lett. the result of the first experimental test of the Ratio Method to study halo nuclei.

All News

Picture: Jan-Christoph Hartung

Portrait of the Institute

The IKP was presented in the journal 'Nuclear Physics News'. The article can be found at

The article can be found here.

Virtual Tour

Visit the superconducting electron accelerator S-DALINAC virtually! The basic operation of the accelerator and its experiments is explained in this video.

More information can be found on the webpages of the S-DALINAC .