International audienceWith recent improvements in the production of radioactive beams in facilities such as SPIRAL at GANIL, a larger area of the nuclear chart is now accessible for experimentation. For these usually low-intensity and low-energy secondary beams, we have developed the new MAYA detector based on the active-target concept. This device allows to use a relatively thick target without loss of resolution by using the detection gas as target material. Dedicated 3D tracking, particle identification, energy loss and range measurements allow complete kinematic reconstruction of reactions taking place inside MAYA

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Two-proton decay of the 17 Ne low-lying states populated in the 1 H( 18 Ne, d) 17 Ne transfer reaction was studied. The two-proton width Γ2p of the 17 Ne first excited 3/2 − state at E * = 1.288 MeV is of importance for the two-proton radioactivity theory and nuclear-astrophysics applications. A dedicated search for the two-proton emission of this state was performed leading to the new upper limit obtained for the width ratio Γ2p/Γγ < 1.6(3) × 10 −4 . A novel, "combined mass" method is suggested and tested capable to improve the resolution of the experiment which is a prime significance for the study of nuclear states with extremely small particle-to-gamma width ratios Γpart/Γγ . The condition Γpart ≪ Γγ is quite common for the states of astrophysical interest which makes the proposed approach promising in this field.

From multiparameter data obtained at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the integral characteristics of the prompt γ-ray emission were extracted for tripartition of 252Cf with He, Be and C being the third light charged particle. We used multifold γ-ray coincidence spectra for the determination of γ-ray multiplicities assuming a Gaussian distribution for γ-ray multiplicity. The multiplicity distribution characteristics, i.e. mean multiplicity and its dispersion were obtained by minimizing with respect to the calculated values of probabilities of multifold γ-ray coincidences using a combinatoric method. Comparison with the known experimental data from binary fission was made. Further, we investigated dependencies of the mean γ-ray multiplicity on the kinetic energy of the light charged particle. The mean γ-ray multiplicity for He ternary fission is found to increase rapidly with increasing kinetic energy of He in the region less than 11 MeV and then decrease slowly with increasing kinetic energy of He. The anomalous behaviour of γ-ray emission is discussed. The mean γ-ray multiplicity was determined for the first time for Be and C ternary fission. For Be, the γ-ray multiplicity as a function of kinetic energy was obtained as well.