Recoil-beta tagging: A novel technique for studying proton-drip-line nuclei

摘要

Tagging with charged particles and gamma-rays at the focal plane of recoil separators has proven, over the last two decades, to be a very powerful tool for the identification of excited states in exotic nuclei produced with very low cross-sections. One of the key areas so far unexplored in terms of the tagging methodology has been performing correlations with P-particles at the focal plane of a recoil separator. A new technique entitled Recoil-Beta Tagging (RBT) has been developed, this technique exploits the unusual properties of Fermi superallowed beta emitters, which have both a short half-life (similar to 100ms) and high beta(+)-endpoint energy. Correlating with such P-particles using a double-sided silicon strip detector and planar germanium detector as an effective Delta E-E telescope for high-energy positrons has allowed a proof-of-principle of this technique to be carried out, by cleanly identifying excited states in the proton-drip-line nucleus, Rb-74. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.