At the 17th SPARC Topical Workshop 2020
Dr. Zuzana Slavkovska
University of Frankfurt, Germany 
was awarded with the 
SPARC PhD Prize 2020

The SPARC collaboration sincerely congratulates Dr. Zuzana Slavkovska on receiving the SPARC PhD award 2020. This prestigious award was conferred to Dr. Slavkovska for her outstanding work at the GSI Helmholtz Centre and Goethe University Frankfurt. The focus of the PhD work of Dr. Slavkovska was on the experimental investigation of the proton capture by 124Xe nucleus. In order to explore this 124Xe(p, γ)125Cs U+0383 reaction, detailed measurements have been performed at the Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) at GSI for the collisions of bare xenon ions with a hydrogen gas jet. Based on the analysis of the experimental data and by considering the associated (atomic) process of the radiative electron capture, Dr. Slavkovska has determined the cross sections of the proton capture. This study, performed at the borderline of nuclear and atomic physics, has proven the feasibility of studying astrophysically important fusion reactions of charged particles in inverse kinematics using ion storage rings.

José Paulo Santos, Reinhold Schuch, Thomas Stöhlker, Andrey Surzhykov