What Can We Learn from Transfer, and How Is Best to Do It?

Abstract

An overview of the experimental aspects of nucleon transfer reactions with radioactive beams is presented, aimed principally at a researcher who is beginning their work in this area. Whilst the physics motivation and the means of theoretical interpretation are briefly described, the emphasis is on the experimental techniques and the quantities that can be measured. General features of the reactions which affect experimental design are highlighted and explained. A range of experimental choices for performing the experiments is described, and the reasons for making the different choices are rationalised and discussed. It is often useful to detect gamma-rays from electromagnetic transitions in the final nucleus, both to improve the precision and resolution of the excitation energy measurements and to assist in the identification of the observed levels. Several aspects related to gamma-ray detection and angular correlations are therefore included. The emphasis is on single-nucleon transfer reactions, and mostly on (d,p) transfer to produce nuclei that are more neutron-rich, but there are also brief discussions of other types of transfer reactions induced by both light ions and heavy ions.

Experimental study of the effective nucleon-nucleon interaction using the F21(d,p)F22

“…The one-neutron transfer reaction is a powerful tool to study the single-particle structure of nuclei [14][15][16][17]. In the present work, one-neutron adding (d, p) reaction on 21 F is used to explore the single-particle structure of the low-lying states in 22 F. A summary of previously identified levels in 22 F, along with their possible spinparity assignments, are shown in Fig.…”

Structure of $^{26}$Na via a Novel Technique Using ($d,p\gamma $) with a Radioactive $^{25}$Na Beam

“…The details of the analysis are given elsewhere [13,14] and further issues relating to the experiment and the analysis are discussed in ref. [23]. Here, the emphasis has been on the comparison with previous work (for states up to 3 MeV in 26 Na) and on the recent extension to include the analysis of gamma-ray angular distributions.…”

Theory of theA(d,p)Breaction as a tool for nuclear structure studies

“…These plane wave Born approximation theories led to the realization that (d, p) reactions could be used to identify transferred neutron angular momentum quantum numbers and spectroscopic strength from the study of the angular distributions and magnitudes of the differential cross-sections of transitions leading to sharp final states of nucleus B. It is just these features of A(d, p)B reactions that have meant they are playing an important role in studies of exotic nuclei away from the valley of stability using new radioactive beam facilities and inverse kinematics at laboratories all over the world, see the articles on facilities that use the isotope separation on line (ISOL) method in [4], and also [5,6].…”