Biographical Sketch:
Prof. Casten’s research focuses on nuclear structure physics. In 1995, he assumed a position as the Director of the A.W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory (WNSL, now Wright Laboratory) at Yale University and was made Professor of Physics that same year. In 2008, he received the appointment as the University’s inaugural D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics. He served in that capacity until 2015, when he retired with emeritus status.
Prior to joining the faculty at Yale in 1995, he was a physicist at the Nuclear Structure Group of the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), later becoming a senior scientist. Casten was also the group leader of the Nuclear Structure Group at BNL. Prior to BNL, Casten conducted postdoctoral research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). His initial post-graduate appointment was as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen.
Casten was an associate editor for Physical Review C for experimental nuclear structure. He held visiting positions at the Institut Laue–Langevin, at the University of Cologne’s Institute for Nuclear Physics, at the CERN/ISOLDE facility, and at Stony Brook University. He chaired the United States Department of Energy’s Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) from 2003 to 2005, and was also chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) in 2008 and of the FRIB Science Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2012.
Research:
Casten’s research focuses on the structural evolution of the atomic nucleus as a function of the numbers of its constituent protons and neutrons including quantum phase transitions in nuclear shapes, the evolution of the underlying shell structure, and the emergence of collective behavior. One aim is to identify the remarkable regularities and simple patterns exhibited by these complex quantal many-body systems and to describe them in terms of the symmetries and quantum numbers applicable to the system as a whole. At the next level, we try to understand the origin of these regularities in terms of the interactions of the nucleons, especially the valence proton-neutron interaction. The experimental component of the research looks especially to the properties of newly accessible exotic nuclei far from the valley of stable nuclei.
Education:
Ph.D., Yale University, 1967
Honors & Awards:
Winner 2011 Tom W. Bonner Prize (for studies of dynamical symmetries); Winner 2009 Mentoring Award of the APS/DNP (for mentoring female graduate students); Chair NSAC 2003-2005; Chair DNP(APS), 2008; Chair FRIB Science Advisory Comm; Editor, Phys. Rev. C for Exp. Nuclear Structure for 25 years (through December 2024).
Selected Publications:
- SU(3) Quasidynamical Symmetry Underlying the Alhassid-Whelan Arc of Regularity, Dennis Bonatsos, E.A. McCutchan and R.F. Casten, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 (2010) 022502.
- Enhanced Sensitivity of Nuclear Binding Energies to Collective Structure, R. B. Cakirli, R. F. Casten, R. Winkler, K. Blaum and M. Kowalska, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102 (2009) 082501.
- Empirical Signature for Shape Transitions Mediated by Sub-shell Changes, R. B. Cakirli and R. F. Casten, Phys. Rev. (Rapid Communications) C 78 (2008) 041301(R).
- Direct Empirical Correlation Between Proton-Neutron Interaction Strengths and the Growth of Collectivity in Nuclei, R.B. Cakirli and R.F. Casten, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 (2006) 132501.
- Empirical Realization of a Critical Point Description in Atomic Nuclei, R.F. Casten and N.V. Zamfir, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 052503 (2001).
- INSPIRE publications
