An exclusive measurement has been made of the Coulomb dissociation of the two-neutron halo nucleus 11Li at 70 MeV/nucleon at RIKEN. Strong low-energy (soft) E1 excitation is observed, peaked at about Ex = 0.6 MeV with B(E1) = 1.42(18) e2fm2 for Erel < or = 3 MeV, which was largely missed in previous measurements. This excitation represents the strongest E1 transition ever observed at such low excitation energies. The spectrum is reproduced well by a three-body model with a strong two-neutron correlation, which is further supported by the E1 non-energy-weighted cluster sum rule.

We theoretically show and experimentally verify that a pair of linearly polarized intense femtosecond pulses can create molecular ensembles with oriented rotational angular momentum on an ultrafast (approximately ps) time scale, when the delay and the mutual polarization between them are appropriately arranged. An asymmetric distribution for +M and -M sublevels relies on quantum interference between rotational wave packets created in stimulated Raman excitation by the first and second pulses. The present approach provides spatiotemporally propagating ensembles, of which the classical perspective is molecules rotating in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.

We report on the multiphoton ionization processes in the soft-x-ray region ͑ഛ30 nm͒. On the basis of the measured time-of-flight spectra for both ions and electrons obtained using intense soft-x-ray pulses produced by high-order harmonics, the cross sections of the two-photon double ionization and above-threshold ionization of He are estimated. The high-intensity soft-x-ray radiation achieved by phase-matched high-order harmonics enables the investigation of these nonlinear optical processes, which were beyond the reach of conventional light sources.

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We report on the observation of doubly charged helium ions produced by a nonlinear interaction between a helium atom and photons with a photon energy of 42 eV which are generated with the 27th harmonic of a femtosecond pulse from a Ti:sapphire laser. The number of ions is proportional to the square of the intensity of the 27th harmonic pulse, and thus two-photon double ionization should be dominantly induced as compared with other nonlinear processes accompanying sequential ionization via a singly charged ion. This phenomenon is utilized to measure the pulse duration of the 27th harmonic pulse by using an autocorrelation technique, for the first time to our knowledge, and as a result a duration of 8 fs is found.

A NaI(Tl) detector array called DALI2 (Detector Array for Low Intensity radiation 2) has been constructed for in-beam γ-ray spectroscopy experiments with fast radioactive isotope (RI) beams. It consists typically of 186 NaI(Tl) scintillators covering polar angles from ∼15 • to ∼160 • with an average angular resolution of 6 • in full width at half maximum. Its high granularity (good angular resolution) enables Doppler-shift corrections that result in, for example, 10% energy resolution and 20% full-energy photopeak efficiency for 1-MeV γ rays emitted from fast-moving nuclei (velocities of v/c ≃ 0.6). DALI2 has been employed successfully in numerous experiments using fast RI beams with velocities of v/c = 0.3 − 0.6 provided by the RIKEN RI Beam Factory.

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