Near-barrier reactions with radioactive ion beams at the ReA3 facility

Z Kohley

doi:10.1051/epjconf/20136302003

Abstract

The new ReA3 re-accelerated beam facility at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) will provide high quality radioactive ion beams (RIBs), produced from fast fragmentation reactions, at energies around the Coulomb barrier. These radioactive isotopes can have exotic properties such as neutron/proton skins, halos, or unexpected changes in their shell structure. ReA3 will allow us to explore how these exotic properties manifest themselves in low-energy reactions. In particular, heavy-ion fusion induced with medium mass RIBs remains almost completely unexplored as only three fusion reactions using RIBs, between fluorine (Z = 9) and tin (Z = 50), have ever been measured. A new research program focused on the study of heavy-ion fusion reactions is being developed to take advantage of the world-unique RIBs offered by the ReA3 facility. Along with an overview of the ReA3 facility, details about three devices being developed for exploration of fusion reactions induced by RIBs will be presented.

Highlights

The emergence of radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities has provided experimentalists with the ability to explore nuclear reactions and structure away from the valley of stability
Medium-mass RIBs that are very difficult to produce at ISOL facilities will be available for the first time at ReA3
The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) is near completion of the ReA3 facility which will provide world-unique radioactive ion beams (RIBs) at energies around the Coulomb barrier

Summary

Introduction

The emergence of radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities has provided experimentalists with the ability to explore nuclear reactions and structure away from the valley of stability. The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) produces RIBs using the fast fragmentation process which can provide a widerange of exotic nuclei at energies from about 50 - 100 MeV/u. The ReA3 facility at the NSCL will extend this scope of research by providing the same RIBs produced from the fragmentation process at much lower energies, 3 - 6 MeV/u [9]. Three RIB fusion experiments [19,20,21,22] have been completed in between the light nuclei region (Z ≤ 9) and the radioactive Sn beams from HRIBF. In all three experiments (shown in the red box in Fig. 1) the fast fragmentation mechanism was used to produce the secondary RIB which had to be degraded down to the appropriate energy for the fusion measurements.

Experiments

ReA3 facility

Fusion with RIBs

Experimental devices

Summary

Methods