https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-023-01081-w
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
PANDORA Project for the study of photonuclear reactions below 
1
Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP), Osaka University, 567-0047, Ibaraki, Japan
2
Institute for Radiation Sciences (IRS), Osaka University, 560-0043, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan
3
Department of Physics, Osaka University, 560-0043, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan
4
School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa
5
iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences, 7129, Somerset West, South Africa
6
Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP)/Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), Str. Reactorului 30, 077125, Bucharest-Măgurele, Romania
7
Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie, CNRS, Université Paris Cité, 10 rue ALiceDomon et Léonie Duquet, 75013, Paris, France
8
Institut d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 226, Campus de la Plaine, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
9
Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro, 152-8550, Tokyo, Japan
10
IJCLab, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405, Orsay Cedex, France
11
RIKEN, 2-1 Hirosawa, 351-0198, Wako, Saitama, Japan
12
Department of Physics, Hokkaido University, 060-0810, Sapporo, Japan
13
Faculty of Science, Japan and Nuclear Reaction Data Centre, Hokkaido University, 060-0810, Sapporo, Japan
14
Department of Physics, Western Michigan University, 49008, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
15
Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289, Darmstadt, Germany
16
Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 305-8577, Tsukuba, Japan
17
Advanced Science Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 319-1195, Tokai, Ibaraki, Japan
18
Cyclotron and Radioisotope Center, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba Aramaki, Aoba, 980-8578, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
19
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A &M University, 77843-4242, College Station, USA
20
Cyclotron Institute, Texas A &M University, 77843-3636, College Station, USA
21
University of Bucharest, Atomistilor 405, 077125, Bucharest-Măgurele, Romania
22
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy
23
INFN, Sezione di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy
24
Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, 125001, Hisar, India
25
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa Oiwake-Cho, 606-8502, Kyoto, Japan
26
Politehnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
27
GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Planckstrasse 1, 64291, Darmstadt, Germany
28
Department of Physics, Okayama University, 700-8530, Okayama, Japan
29
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Istanbul University, Vezneciler/Fatih, 34134, Istanbul, Turkey
30
Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048, Blindern, 0316, Oslo, Norway
31
Department of Chemical and Physical sciences, Walter Sisulu University, 5100, Mthatha, South Africa
32
Department of Physics, Akal University, Talwandi Sabo, 151302, Bathinda, Punjab, India
33
Physics Department, TU Munich, 85748, Garching, Germany
34
Research Center for Electron-Photon Science, Tohoku University, 982-0826, Sendai, Japan
35
Department of Information Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kagawa College, 761-8058, Takamatsu, Japan
36
Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 201210, Shanghai, China
37
Department of Physics, Konan University, 658-8501, Kobe, Japan
38
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 201800, Shanghai, China
39
University of Chinese Academy of Science, 100049, Beijing, China
40
Department of Physics, University of York, Heslington, YO10 5DD, York, UK
41
School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, 100871, Beijing, China
Received:
30
December
2022
Accepted:
6
July
2023
Published online:
11
September
2023
Photonuclear reactions of light nuclei below a mass of are planned to be studied experimentally and theoretically with the PANDORA (Photo-Absorption of Nuclei and Decay Observation for Reactions in Astrophysics) project. Two experimental methods, virtual photon excitation by proton scattering and real photo absorption by a high-brilliance 
-ray beam produced by laser Compton scattering, will be applied to measure the photoabsorption cross sections and decay branching ratio of each decay channel as a function of the photon energy. Several nuclear models, e.g. anti-symmetrized molecular dynamics, mean-field and beyond-mean-field models, a large-scale shell model, and ab initio models, will be employed to predict the photonuclear reactions. The uncertainty in the model predictions will be evaluated based on the discrepancies between the model predictions and experimental data. The data and predictions will be implemented in the general reaction calculation code, TALYS. The results will be applied to the simulation of the photo-disintegration process of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays in inter-galactic propagation.
© The Author(s) 2023
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