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Mirror energy differences (MED) are a direct consequence of isospin symmetry breaking. Moreover, the study of MED has proved to give valuable information of several nuclear structure properties. We present the results of an experiment performed in GANIL to study the MED in mirror nuclei 23Mg-23Na up to high spin. The experimental values are compared with state-of-the-art shell model calculations. This permits to enlighten several nuclear structure properties, such as the way in which the nucleons alignment proceeds, the radius variation with J, the role of the spin-orbit interaction and the importance of isospin symmetry breaking terms of nuclear origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new experimental measurements of resonance strengths in the astrophysical 23Al(p , γ)24Si reaction, constraining the pathway of nucleosynthesis beyond 22Mg in X-ray burster scenarios. Specifically, we have performed the first measurement of the (d , p) reaction using a radioactive beam of 23Ne to explore levels in 24Ne, the mirror analog of 24Si. Four strong single-particle states were observed and corresponding neutron spectroscopic factors were extracted with a precision of ∼20%. Using these spectroscopic factors, together with mirror state identifications, we have reduced uncertainties in the strength of the key ℓ = 0 resonance at E r = 157 keV, in the astrophysical 23Al(p , γ) reaction, by a factor of 4. Our results show that the 22Mg(p , γ)23Al(p , γ) pathway dominates over the competing 22Mg(α , p) reaction in all but the most energetic X-ray burster events (T > 0.85 GK), significantly affecting energy production and the preservation of hydrogen fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]