Search

Long-lived isomers in 212Bi have been studied following 238U projectile fragmentation at 670 MeV per nucleon. The fragmentation products were injected as highly charged ions into the GSI storage ring, giving access to masses and half-lives. While the excitation energy of the first isomer of 212Bi was confirmed, the second isomer was observed at 1478(30) keV, in contrast to the previously accepted value of >1910 keV. It was also found to have an extended Lorentz-corrected in-ring halflife >30 min, compared to 7.0(3) min for the neutral atom. Both the energy and half-life differences can be understood as being due a substantial, though previously unrecognised, internal decay branch for neutral atoms. Earlier shell-model calculations are now found to give good agreement with the isomer excitation energy. Furthermore, these and new calculations predict the existence of states at slightly higher energy that could facilitate isomer de-excitation studies., Comment: published in PRL 110, 122502

We have measured proton and neutron energy spectra by stopping negative kaons on liquid helium4. Two distinct peak structures were found on both spectra, which were assigned to the formation of new kinds of strange stribaryons. In this paper, we summarize both results., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, HYP2003 conference proceedings

We measured the neutron time-of-flight spectrum in the ^4He(stopped K^-, n) reaction by stopping negative kaons in a superfluid helium target. A clear enhancement was observed in the neutron spectrum, which indicates the formation of a strange tribaryon of charge +1 with a mass and width of M = 3141 +/- 3 (stat.) +4/-1 (sys.) MeV/c^2 and G < 23 MeV/c^2. This state, denoted as S^+(3140), is about 25 MeV/c^2 higher than the previously observed S^0(3115) T=1., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, updated because of new reslut found in PLB597(2004)263

Deeply bound 1s states of $\pi^-$ in $^{115,119,123}$Sn were preferentially observed using the Sn($d$,$^3$He) pion-transfer reaction under the recoil-free condition. The 1s binding energies and widths were precisely determined, and were used to deduce the isovector parameter of the s-wave pion-nucleus potential to be $b_1 =-0.115\pm 0.007 ~m_{\pi}^{-1}$. The observed enhancement of $|b_1|$ over the free $\pi N$ value ($b_1^{\rm free}/b_1 = 0.78 \pm 0.05$) indicates a reduction of the chiral order parameter, $f^{*}_{\pi} (\rho)^2/f_{\pi}^2 \approx 0.64$, at the normal nuclear density, $\rho = \rho_0$., Comment: 4 pages including 3 postscript figures, RevTeX 4 with multirow.sty, submitted to Physical Review Letters