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High-energy (12)C ions offer favourable conditions for the treatment of deep-seated local tumours. Several facilities for the heavy ion therapy are planned or under construction, for example the new clinical ion-therapy unit HIT at the Radiological University Clinics in Heidelberg. In order to improve existing treatment planning models, it is essential to evaluate the secondary fragment production and to include these contributions to the therapy dose with higher accuracy. Secondary neutrons are most abundantly produced in the reactions between (12)C beams and tissues. The dose contribution to tissues by a neutron is fairly small compared with the projectile and the other charged fragments due to no ionisation and the small reaction cross-sections; however, it distributes in a considerably wider region beyond the bragg-peak because of the strong penetrability. Systematic data on energy spectra and doses of secondary neutrons produced by (12)C beams using water targets of different thicknesses for various detection angles have therefore been measured in this study at GSI Darmstadt.

Storage-ring mass spectrometry was applied to neutron-rich 197Au projectile fragments. Masses of 18l,183Lu, 185,186Hf, 187,188Ta, 191W, and 192,193Re nuclei were measured for the first time. The uncertainty of previously known masses of 189,190W and 195Os nuclei was improved. Observed irregularities on the smooth two-neutron separation energies for Hf and W isotopes are linked to the collectivity phenomena in the corresponding nuclei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of neutron-rich isotopes in the A = 185 region of the nuclear chart has uncovered long-lived (>1 s) isomers in several isotopes of hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium, and osmium. The region was accessed via the use of projectile fragmentation with the UNILAC-SIS accelerators at GSI. Fragmentation products of 197Au were passed through the fragment separator (FRS) and injected into the experimental storage ring (ESR), where single-ion identifications could be made. Evidence is presented for isomers in 183,184,186Hf 186,187Ta 186W, 190,192,194Re, and 195Os with excitation energies in the range of 0.1-3.0 MeV. The lightest of these nuclides have well deformed prolate shapes, while the heaviest are transitional and susceptible to shape changes. Their properties are interpreted with the help of multi-quasiparticle and potential-energy-surface calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]