Horia Petrascu

IFIN-HH - Institutul National pentru Fizica si Inginerie Nucleara Horia Hulubei

Horia graduated from Bucharest University, Faculty of Physics, ‘Optics, Spectroscopy, Lasers’ specialty. He built, for the first time in Romania, a pulsed Xe laser. Upon joining IFIN-HH in 1987 his activity became focused on nuclear physics, mainly on detection systems and experimental methodics. The topic of his 1994 PhD thesis was ‘Contribution to the development of methods of multi-wire proportional chambers, sensitive to position, and spectrometric proportional counters, using new interaction processes of radiation with materials’. Two years later he became a Senior Researcher.

In 1994 Horia designed two models of ‘MUSIC - type detectors’ which were successfully used in March 1995 for a 6 weeks experiment at the RIKEN institute in Japan.  This concerned the study of fusion products that appear in ²⁷Al(⁹Li,X), ²⁷Al(¹¹Li,X), ¹²C(⁹Li,X) and ¹²C(¹¹Li,X) reactions. Joining the RIKEN Institute, Japan in 1995 Horia worked for 6 months as JSPS fellow and then, as an STA postdoc researcher until 1999.  As STA fellow, he developed two new types of ionization chambers. One of them fast, and designed to count events with a rate of 10⁵/s and the second a MUSIC-type sensitive to position. Both detectors had the preamplifiers connected directly to the detecting core, inside the active gas volume. This technology was a novelty, starting a new direction in the world in gas detectors design. 

Horia was invited to INFN-LNS Catania, Italy in November 1999 to give lessons in these new types of detectors, and also to present some trends in this field of activity. During the period May to September 2000 he performed a new experiment at the RIKEN institute (Japan) concerning the fusion of ¹¹Li on Si, using an ‘array’ neutron detector, the first one built completely in Romania. Following this in November to December, at INFN-LNS Catania (Italy), Horia started to build a prototype based on a micro strip detector attached to a constant gradient field cavity. In parallel he worked within the “MAGNEX” project, developing the PSD detector for this spectrometer. More recently he has been involved in many projects and experiments together with groups from GANIL (France), INFN (Italy), Paisley University (Scotland), Poland and Russia.