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Detailed spectroscopy of the neutron-unbound nucleus 28 F has been performed for the first time following proton/neutron removal from 29 Ne / 29 F beams at energies around 230 MeV / nucleon . The invariant-mass spectra were reconstructed for both the 27 F ( * ) + n and 26 F ( * ) + 2 n coincidences and revealed a series of well-defined resonances. A near-threshold state was observed in both reactions and is identified as the 28 F ground state, with S n ( 28 F ) = − 199 ( 6 ) keV , while analysis of the 2 n decay channel allowed a considerably improved S n ( 27 F ) = 1620 ( 60 ) keV to be deduced. Comparison with shell-model predictions and eikonal-model reaction calculations have allowed spin-parity assignments to be proposed for some of the lower-lying levels of 28 F . Importantly, in the case of the ground state, the reconstructed 27 F + n momentum distribution following neutron removal from 29 F indicates that it arises mainly from the 1 p 3 / 2 neutron intruder configuration. This demonstrates that the island of inversion around N = 20 includes 28 F , and most probably 29 F , and suggests that 28 O is not doubly magic.

We used the 8$\pi$ $\gamma$-ray spectrometer at the TRIUMF-ISAC radiocative ion beam facility to obtain high-precision branching ratios for $^{19}$Ne $\beta^+$ decay to excited states in $^{19}$F. Together with other previous work, our measurements determine the superallowed $1/2^+ \to 1/2^+$ beta branch to the ground state in $^{19}$F to be 99.9878(7)\%, which is three times more precise than known previously. The implications of these measurements for testing a variety of weak interaction symmetries are discussed briefly.

A Coulomb-excitation reorientation-effect measurement using the TIGRESS γ−ray spectrometer at the TRIUMF/ISAC II facility has permitted the determination of the 〈 2 1 + ‖ E 2 ˆ ‖ 2 1 + 〉 diagonal matrix element in 12C from particle−γ coincidence data and state-of-the-art no-core shell model calculations of the nuclear polarizability. The nuclear polarizability for the ground and first-excited (2 1 + ) states in 12C have been calculated using chiral NN N4LO500 and NN+3NF350 interactions, which show convergence and agreement with photo-absorption cross-section data. Predictions show a change in the nuclear polarizability with a substantial increase between the ground state and first excited 2 1 + state at 4.439 MeV. The polarizability of the 2 1 + state is introduced into the current and previous Coulomb-excitation reorientation-effect analyses of 12C. Spectroscopic quadrupole moments of Q S ( 2 1 + ) = + 0.053 ( 44 ) eb and Q S ( 2 1 + ) = + 0.08 ( 3 ) eb are determined, respectively, yielding a weighted average of Q S ( 2 1 + ) = + 0.071 ( 25 ) eb, in agreement with recent ab initio calculations. The present measurement confirms that the 2 1 + state of 12C is oblate and emphasizes the important role played by the nuclear polarizability in Coulomb-excitation studies of light nuclei.

Scattering of 8He from 4He has been performed through the coincident detection of the scattered particles using a silicon array within a helium-4 gas volume with a 8He beam. This permitted the reconstruction of the interaction probability as a function of position within the gas and hence the excitation function to be calculated together with the angular distribution of the products. These measurements also enabled the reconstruction of the two-neutron transfer to 6He + 6He. The measurements provide the first characterisation of the scattering of the α+4n, 8He, halo nucleus from 4He and the 2n-transfer to populate the symmetric final state. The results indicate the presence of a L=4 component at excitation energies of 14–15 MeV, consistent with a broad (∼1 MeV) Jπ=4+ resonance. These measurements would agree with generalized two-centre cluster model (GTCM) calculations indicating a cluster, or molecular, structure predicted at this energy. ispartof: Physics Letters B vol:775 pages:58-62 status: published

The first measurement of inelastic scattering of 9 Li from deuterons at the ISAC facility is reported. The measured angular distribution for the first excited state confirms the nature of excitation to be an E2 transition. The quadrupole deformation parameter is extracted from an analysis of the angular distribution.

The structure of the unbound nuclei 9 He , 10 Li and 13 Be has been explored using breakup and proton-knockout from intermediate energy 11 Be and 14,15 B beams. In the case of both N = 7 isotones, virtual s-wave strength is observed near threshold together with a higher-lying resonance. A very narrow structure at threshold in the 12 Be + n relative energy spectrum is demonstrated to arise from the decay of the 14 Be *(2+), discounting earlier reports of a strong virtual s-wave state in 13 Be .

International audience; The changing of the nuclear shells for light, neutron-rich nuclei, and the single-particle nature of 26Na, has been explored by studying 25Na(d, p)26Na in inverse kinematics, using a beam of 25Na ions at 5 MeV per nucleon, provided by the ISAC-II facility at TRIUMF, Vancouver. Charged particles were detected with a highly-segmented silicon array that surrounded the 0.5 mg/cm2 (CD2)n target. Gamma rays from the recoiling 26Na nucleus were detected using eight Compton-suppressed HPGe clover detectors. Recoil tagging was provided by an in-beam scintillation foil, downstream of the germanium array. A novel technique of utilising pγ- and pγγ-gating to extract proton angular distributions from states populated close in energy was employed with success. New states in 26Na that are populated directly have been identified, using γ-decay patterns. Shell model calculations for comparison to experimental results are ongoing, using different model bases.

At low stellar temperatures the energy release due to the CN cycle is regulated by its slowest reaction ${}^{14}\mathrm{N}(p,\ensuremath{\gamma}){}^{15}\mathrm{O}$, the rate of which strongly depends on the subthreshold resonance at ${E}_{\mathrm{c}}.\mathrm{m}.=\ensuremath{-}504\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{keV}$, which corresponds to the 6.79 MeV state in ${}^{15}\mathrm{O}$. By using the Doppler-shift attenuation method and the ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}({}^{16}\mathrm{O},\ensuremath{\alpha}){}^{15}\mathrm{O}$ reaction to populate the state, we obtained an upper limit on the lifetime of this state of $\ensuremath{\tau}l1.8\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{fs}$ [68.3% confidence level (C.L.)]. In addition we measured the lifetimes of the 6.18 and 6.86 MeV states to be $\ensuremath{\tau}l2.5$ and $\ensuremath{\tau}=13.{3}_{\ensuremath{-}1.2}^{+0.9}\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{fs}$, respectively (68.3% C.L.), in good agreement with the literature.

The low-lying level structure of the unbound neutron-rich nucleus $^{13}$Be has been investigated via breakup on a carbon target of secondary beams of $^{14,15}$B at 35 MeV/nucleon. The coincident detection of the beam velocity $^{12}$Be fragments and neutrons permitted the invariant mass of the $^{12}$Be+$n$ and $^{12}$Be+$n$+$n$ systems to be reconstructed. In the case of the breakup of $^{15}$B, a very narrow structure at threshold was observed in the $^{12}$Be+$n$ channel. Contrary to earlier stable beam fragmentation studies which identified this as a strongly interacting $s$-wave virtual state in $^{13}$Be, analysis here of the $^{12}$Be+$n$+$n$ events demonstrated that this was an artifact resulting from the sequential-decay of the $^{14}$Be(2$^+$) state. Single-proton removal from $^{14}$B was found to populate a broad low-lying structure some 0.70 MeV above the neutron-decay threshold in addition to a less prominent feature at around 2.4 MeV. Based on the selectivity of the reaction and a comparison with (0-3)$\hbar\omega$ shell-model calculations, the low-lying structure is concluded to most probably arise from closely spaced J$^\pi$=1/2$^+$ and 5/2$^+$ resonances (E$_r$=0.40$\pm$0.03 and 0.85$^{+0.15}_{-0.11}$ MeV), whilst the broad higher-lying feature is a second 5/2$^+$ level (E$_r$=2.35$\pm$0.14 MeV). Taken in conjunction with earlier studies, it would appear that the lowest 1/2$^+$ and 1/2$^-$ levels lie relatively close together below 1 MeV., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Physical Review C

The reaction mechanisms of the two-neutron transfer reaction ${}^{12}$C(${}^{6}$He,${}^{4}$He) have been studied at ${E}_{\mathrm{lab}}=30$ MeV at the TRIUMF ISAC-II facility using the Silicon Highly-segmented Array for Reactions and Coulex (SHARC) charged-particle detector array. Optical potential parameters have been extracted from the analysis of the elastic scattering angular distribution. The new potential has been applied to the study of the transfer angular distribution to the 2${}_{2}^{+}$ 8.32 MeV state in ${}^{14}$C, using a realistic three-body ${}^{6}$He model and advanced shell-model calculations for the carbon structure, allowing to calculate the relative contributions of the simultaneous and sequential two-neutron transfer. The reaction model provides a good description of the 30-MeV data set and shows that the simultaneous process is the dominant transfer mechanism. Sensitivity tests of optical potential parameters show that the final results can be considerably affected by the choice of optical potentials. A reanalysis of data measured previously at ${E}_{\mathrm{lab}}=18$ MeV, however, is not as well described by the same reaction model, suggesting that one needs to include higher-order effects in the reaction mechanism.

The highly-efficient and segmented TIGRESS gamma-ray spectrometer at TRIUMF has been used to perform a reorientation-effect Coulomb-excitation study of the 2(1)(+) state at 3.368 MeV in Be-10. This is the first Coulomb-excitation measurement that enables one to obtain information on diagonal matrix elements for such a high-lying first excited state from gamma-ray data. With the availability of accurate lifetime data, a value of -0.110 +/- 0.087 eb is determined for the diagonal matrix element, which assuming the rotor model, leads to a negative spectroscopic quadrupole moment of Q(S)(2(1)(+)) = -0.083 +/- 0.066 eb. This result is in agreement with both no-core shell-model calculations performed in this work with the CD-Bonn 2000 two-nucleon potential and large shell-model spaces, and Green's function Monte Carlo predictions with two-plus three-nucleon potentials.

We report a precise determination of the $^{19}\mathrm{Ne}$ half-life to be ${T}_{1/2}=17.262\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.007\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{s}$. This result disagrees with the most recent precision measurements and is important for placing bounds on predicted right-handed interactions that are absent in the current standard model. We are able to identify and disentangle two competing systematic effects that influence the accuracy of such measurements. Our findings prompt a reassessment of results from previous high-precision lifetime measurements that used similar equipment and methods.

The 18Ne(α,p) 21Na reaction provides one of the main HCNO-breakout routes into the rp process in x-ray bursts. The 18Ne(α,p0) 21Na reaction cross section has been determined for the first time in the Gamow energy region for peak temperatures T∼2 GK by measuring its time-reversal reaction 21Na(p,α) 18Ne in inverse kinematics. The astrophysical rate for ground-state to ground-state transitions was found to be a factor of 2 lower than Hauser-Feshbach theoretical predictions. Our reduced rate will affect the physical conditions under which breakout from the HCNO cycles occurs via the 18Ne(α,p) 21Na reaction.

The 18Ne(α,p) 21Na reaction provides one of the main HCNO-breakout routes into the rp process in x-ray bursts. The 18Ne(α,p0) 21Na reaction cross section has been determined for the first time in the Gamow energy region for peak temperatures T∼2 GK by measuring its time-reversal reaction 21Na(p,α) 18Ne in inverse kinematics. The astrophysical rate for ground-state to ground-state transitions was found to be a factor of 2 lower than Hauser-Feshbach theoretical predictions. Our reduced rate will affect the physical conditions under which breakout from the HCNO cycles occurs via the 18Ne(α,p) 21Na reaction.

The quenching of the N=20 shell gap in neutron-rich nuclei is investigated by studying the single-particle structure of 27Ne via neutron transfer using a 26Ne beam. Two low-lying negative-parity intruder states have been observed, the lowest of which is identified as Jπ=3/2−, confirming earlier speculations. A level identified as 7/2− is observed higher in energy than the 3/2−, contrary to the ordering at β-stability and at an energy significantly different from the predictions of previous shell-model calculations. The measured energies and deduced spectroscopic factors are well reproduced in full (0,1)-ℏω 0s-0p-0d-1s-0f-1p calculations in which there is a significant ad hoc reduction (∼0.7 MeV) in the N=20 shell gap.

Presentado al Rutherford Centennial Conference on Nuclear Physics 8–12 August 2011, Manchester, UK.-- et al., The first measurement of the elastic scattering of the halo nucleus 11Li and its core 9Li on 208Pb at energies around the Coulomb barrier is presented. The 11Li reaction showed a large cross section for the breakup channel, even at energies well below the barrier. The analysis of the 11Li + 208Pb scattering data in terms of the continuum-discretized coupled-channel calculations indicates that the effect of the coupling to the breakup channels produces a strong suppression of the elastic cross section at energies above and below the barrier. This effect is mainly due to the strong Coulomb coupling to the dipole states in the low-lying continuum of 11Li.

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.84.011301.

Nucleon transfer experiments have in recent years begun to be exploited in the study of nuclei far from stability, using radioactive beams in inverse kinematics. New techniques are still being developed in order to perform these experiments. The present experiment is designed to study the odd-odd nucleus Na which has a high density of states and therefore requires gamma-ray detection to distinguish between them. The experiment employed an intense beam of up to 3×10 pps of Na at 5.0 MeV/nucleon from the ISAC-II facility at triumf. The new silicon array SHARC was used for the first time and was coupled to the segmented clover gamma-ray array TIGRESS. A novel thin plastic scintillator detector was employed at zero degrees to identify and reject reactions occurring on the carbon component of the (CD) target. The efficiency of the background rejection using this detector is described with respect to the proton and gamma-ray spectra from the (d,p) reaction. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

The near threshold structure of the unbound N=7 isotones 10Li and 9He has been investigated using proton removal and breakup from intermediate energy (35 MeV/nucleon) secondary beams of 11Be and 14,15B. The coincident detection of the beam velocity 9Li and 8He fragments and neutrons permitted the relative energy of the in-flight decay of 10Li and 9He to be reconstructed. Both systems were found to exhibited virtual s-wave strength near threshold together with a higher-lying resonance., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to INPC2010 - "International Nuclear Physics Conference", Vancouver, Canada, 4-9 July 2010, Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series

The reaction 20 O ( d , t ) has been studied in inverse kinematics using a secondary radioactive beam produced with the SPIRAL facility at GANIL. Fragments, light charged particles and gamma rays were measured with the TIARA, MUST2, VAMOS and EXOGAM detectors and preliminary results are reported. The level scheme of 19 O is built and the spin and parity of one state is tentatively assigned using the one-neutron transfer angular distribution.

International audience; States in 26Na were populated in the (d, pγ) reaction, induced by bombarding deuterium target nuclei with an intense reaccelerated beam of 25Na ions from the ISAC2 accelerator at TRIUMF. Gamma-rays were recorded in coincidence with protons and used to extract differential cross sections for 21 states up to the neutron decay threshold of 5 MeV. Results for levels below 3 MeV are discussed in detail and compared with shell model calculations and with previous work. The angular distributions of decay gamma-rays were measured for individual states and are compared to theoretically calculated distributions, highlighting some issues for future work.