The change in the configuration of valence protons between the initial and final states in the neutrinoless double β decay of Together with our recent determination of the relevant neutron configurations involved in the process, a quantitative comparison with the latest shell-model and interacting-boson-model calculations reveals significant discrepancies. These are the same calculations used to determine the nuclear matrix elements governing the rate of neutrinoless double β decay in these systems.
A quantitative description of the change in ground-state neutron occupancies between 136 Xe and 136 Ba, the initial and final state in the neutrinoless double β decay of 136 Xe, has been extracted from precision measurements of the cross sections of single-neutron adding and -removing reactions. Comparisons are made to recent theoretical calculations of the same properties using various nuclearstructure models. These are the same calculations used to determine the magnitude of the nuclear matrix elements for the process, which at present disagree with each other by factors of two or three. The experimental neutron occupancies show some disagreement with the theoretical calculations.
The nuclei below lead but with more than 126 neutrons are crucial to an understanding of the astrophysical r-process in producing nuclei heavier than A ∼ 190. Despite their importance, the structure and properties of these nuclei remain experimentally untested as they are difficult to produce in nuclear reactions with stable beams. In a first exploration of the shell structure of this region, neutron excitations in 207 Hg have been probed using the neutron-adding (d,p) reaction in inverse kinematics. The radioactive beam of 206 Hg was delivered to the new ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer at an energy above the Coulomb barrier. The spectroscopy of 207 Hg marks a first step in improving our understanding of the relevant structural properties of nuclei involved in a key part of the path of the r-process.The nucleus 207 Hg lies in the almost completely unexplored region of the nuclear chart below proton number 82 and just above neutron number 126, both "magic" numbers representing closed shells in the nuclear shell model [1]. The doubly-magic nucleus 208 Pb is the cornerstone of this region, a benchmark nucleus in our understanding of the single-particle foundation of nuclear structure. This region, highlighted on the nuclear chart in Fig. 1, is unique in that its single-particle structure remains unexplored.The nucleosynthesis of heavy elements via the rapid neutron-capture (r-) process path [2] crosses this region, as shown in Fig. 1. The robustness of the N = 126 neutron shell closure plays a crucial role in the nucleosynthesis of the actinides [3][4][5][6][7]. The recent observation of a neutron star merger has provided a new focus of interest [8,9], suggesting a possible astrophysical environment for r-process nucleosynthesis [10-13].Approaching the r-process path along the N = 126 isotonic chain from Pb, the binding energies (the degree to which neutrons are bound by the mean-field potential created by the decreasing number of all other nucleons) decrease, eventually crossing zero binding and becoming unbound. Near closed shells, the level density is low, so the usual statistical assumptions of many resonances participating in neutron capture is not valid, and specific nuclear-structure properties become important. Knowledge of ground-state binding energies of nuclei with N = 126 + n is important in defining the waiting point caused by the N = 126 closure, the bottleneck which is responsible for the third peak in solar system elemental abundances at nuclear mass A ∼ 195 [14]. The binding energies are critical to how the r-process evolves. The energies of ground and excited states have significant consequences for the rate at which direct s-, p-, (and possibly d-) wave neutron-capture (n,γ) reactions proceed [15][16][17]. This was discussed recently in the context of the N = 82 shell closure in Ref. [18].As zero binding is approached, the energies of s orbitals increase less rapidly than those of states with higher angular momenta [19]. This behavior has been studied for light nuclei [20,21] and, in the vicinity o...
The jurogam 3 spectrometer has been constructed for in-beam γ-ray spectroscopy experiments in the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. jurogam 3 consists of germanium-detector modules in a compact geometry surrounding a target to measure γ rays emitted from radioactive nuclei. jurogam 3 can be employed in conjunction with one of two recoil separators, the mara vacuum-mode separator or the ritu gas-filled separator, and other ancillary devices.
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