Excursions Along the Drip Line
Doctoral thesis, 1995

The drip lines are the outer boundaries of the chart of the nuclides, terminating the isobaric chains on both sides of the valley of .beta.-stability with respect to stability against particle emission. The neutron drip line is, at the moment, only experimentally accessible for the very lightest elements. When approaching the neutron drip line, the structure of the nuclei starts to show anomalies compared to stable nuclei. The best known case is 11Li, having an extremely dilute structure with two loosely bound neutrons surrounding a 9Li core with normal density. This kind of configuration has been labelled a neutron halo and can be found in several nuclei along the drip line. This work regards experimental studies of drip-line nuclei through dissociation reactions at high beam energies and spectroscopy of .beta.-delayed particles. The effect of cross-talk between neutron detectors has been measured and compared to the results of a simulation code. The measurements confirmed the validity of the code and showed a negligible contribution of cross-talk for the neutron-detector arrays used in experiments at GANIL. The .beta.-delayed charged particles following the precursors 6,8He have been studied at ISOLDE, CERN with a newly developed gas-detector telescope. The branching ratios for .beta.-delayed deuteron emission from 6He and .beta.-delayed triton emission from 8He were measured with improved accuracy and decreased low-energy cut-off compared to earlier experiments. In an experiment at GSI, dissociation of 8He, 11Li and 11Be, with energies of 240 MeV/u, 280 MeV/u and 460 MeV/u respectively, was studied. From the experimental data, cross sections and momentum distributions could be extracted. The reaction mechanisms could be probed by studying various reaction channels, revealing an invariability regarding the width of the neutron momentum distribution when concentrating upon the core-breakup reactions. The role of the unbound resonance 10Li has been elucidated by population through one-neutron stripping from 11Li and one-proton stripping from 11Be. The longitudinal and transverse momentum distributions from the reaction 11Li -> 9Li + X have been measured at the same beam energy. The widths were found to be identical, and the lack of Coulomb broadening in the transverse case indicates that the halo-removal reactions predominantly take place at large impact parameters.

beta-decay

cross-talk

exotic nuclei

reaction mechanism

neutron halo

gas-detector telescope

momentum distributions

8He

neutron detection

radioactivity

6

dissociation

neutron drip line

11Be

Borromean systems

11Li

Opponent: William Gelletly

Author

Thomas Nilsson

Department of Physics

He-6 and neutron momentum distributions from He-8 in nuclear break-up reactions at 240 MeV/u

Nuclear Physics A,; Vol. 598(1996)p. 418-434

Journal article

Neutron Momentum Distributions from Core Break-up Reactions of Halo Nuclei

Europhysics Letters,; Vol. 30(1995)p. 19-24

Journal article

Study of the Unstable Nucleus Li-10 in Stripping Reactions of the Radioactive Projectiles Be-11 and Li-11

Physical Review Letters,; Vol. 75(1995)p. 1719-1722

Journal article

Study of Charged-Particles Emitted in the Beta-Decay of He-6,He-8

Nuclear Physics A,; Vol. 560(1993)p. 664-676

Journal article

Experimental-Determination of Cross-Talk between Neutron Detectors

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment,; Vol. 317(1992)p. 273-280

Journal article

Longitudinal and Transverse-Momentum Distributions of Li-9 Fragments from Break-up of Li-11

Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics,; Vol. 347(1995)p. 198-204

Journal article

Subject Categories

Subatomic Physics

Physical Sciences

Roots

Basic sciences

ISBN

91-7197-215-3

Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 1147

Opponent: William Gelletly

More information

Created

10/8/2017