Nuclear-structure studies of exotic nuclei with MINIBALL (Vol. 49, No. 2)

Investigations of exotic nuclei at the ISOLDE facility of CERN are pursued with reaccelerated radioactive ion beams by means of high-resolution g-ray spectroscopy. The experimental programme covers a range of topics, which are addressed with beams ranging from neutron-rich magnesium isotopes up to heavy radium isotopes. The nuclear-structure and nuclear-reaction studies provide important insights into collective properties and single particle excitations. The most important outcomes of these measurements include: discoveries of rare nuclear shapes like octupole deformation in the actinide region; the coexistence of different intrinsic nuclear shapes at low excitation energy, and within a very narrow energy range in strontium and mercury isotopes, for which nuclear shell model investigations yielded considerable discrepancies from theory when extrapolated from known stable nuclei; and the remarkable behaviour of exotic neutron-rich nuclei with the “magic” number of 20 neutrons and in the vicinity of semi-magic chains of Ni- and Sn isotopes. The article summarized results obtained with the REX-ISOLDE facility which is the precursor of the newly inaugurated HIE-ISOLDE accelerator at CERN. The new installation allows the in-beam spectroscopy programme to be continued with higher secondary-beam intensity, higher beam energy and better beam quality. The first results have been obtained after commissioning of the super-conducting accelerator.

P. A. Butler, J. Cederkall and P. Reiter, Nuclear-structure studies of exotic nuclei with MINIBALL, J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 44, 044012 (2017)
[Abstract]