Heavy ion charge exchange reactions as probes for nuclearβ-decay

Recent results on heavy-ion induced reactions of interest for neutrinoless double beta decay at INFN-LNS

“…Despite of these caveats coherent ion-ion interactions have been used quite successfully in the past to investigate excitations in the quasi-elastic region. Moreover new theoretical developments for the description of the reaction mechanism involved in heavy ion induced reactions have been achieved under specific conditions and others are presently in progress within the NUMEN project [16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…The experimental activity with accelerated beams proposed and presently in progress consists of two main classes of experiments, corresponding to the exploration of the two directions of isospin lowering τ − τ − and rising τ + τ + , characteristic of β − β − and β + β + decays, respectively. In particular, the β + β + direction in the target is investigated using an 18 Exploratory investigations of the two classes of experiments have been already performed, highlighting the strengths and the limiting aspects of the adopted technique and establishing the best working conditions [30][31][32][33][34].…”

“…For the experiments of this class, the reaction channels of our interest are listed below: • Elastic and inelastic scattering ( 18 One of the main challenges of such experiments is the measurement at very forward angles, including zerodegree. This is performed by placing the spectrometer with its optical axis at +3° with respect to the beam axis.…”

“…The MAGNEX quadrupole and dipole magnetic fields are set in order that the incident beam, after passing through the magnets, reaches a region besides the FPD. For this class of experiments, in fact, the incident beam ( 18 O 8+ ) has higher magnetic rigidity (Bρ) than the ones of the ejectiles of interest (namely 18 Ne, 18 F, 20 Ne, 19 F, 16 O, 17 O with maximum charge state). The beam stops in a specifically designed Faraday Cup, which measures the incident charge in each run, placed in the high-Bρ region besides the FPD.…”

“…A drawing of the MAGNEX spectrometer and an example of the typical 18 O beam trajectory inside the spectrometer is shown in Fig. 1.…”