Production of new neutron-rich isotopes of heavy elements in fragmentation reactions of 238^{238}U projectiles at 1 A GeV

The production of heavy neutron-rich nuclei has been investigated using cold fragmentation reactions of $^{238}$U projectiles at relativistic energies. The experiment performed at the high-resolving-power magnetic spectrometer FRS at GSI allowed to identify 45 new heavy neutron-rich nuclei: $^{205}$Pt, $^{207-210}$Au, $^{211-216}$Hg, $^{213-217}$Tl, $^{215-220}$Pb, $^{219-224}$Bi, $^{221-227}$Po, $^{224-229}$At, $^{229-231}$Rn and $^{233}$Fr. The production cross sections of these nuclei were also determined and used to benchmark reaction codes that predict the production of nuclei far from stability.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Production of neutron-rich nuclei in fragmentation reactions of 132Sn projectiles at relativistic energies

The fragmentation of neutron-rich 132Sn nuclei produced in the fission of 238U projectiles at 950 MeV/u has been investigated at the FRagment Separator (FRS) at GSI. This work represents the first investigation of fragmentation of medium-mass radioactive projectiles with a large neutron excess. The measured production cross sections of the residual nuclei are relevant for the possible use of a two-stage reaction scheme (fission+fragmentation) for the production of extremely neutron-rich medium-mass nuclei in future rare-ion-beam facilities. Moreover, the new data will provide a better understanding of the "memory" effect in fragmentation reactions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Coulomb excitation of exotic nuclei at the R3B-LAND setup

Exotic Ni isotopes have been measured at the R3B-LAND setup at GSI in Darmstadt, using Coulomb excitation in inverse kinematics at beam energies around 500 MeV/u. As the experimental setup allows kinematically complete measurements, the excitation energy was reconstructed using the invariant mass method. The GDR and additional low-lying strength have been observed in 68Ni, the latter exhausting 4.1(1.9)% of the E1 energy-weighted sum rule. Also, the branching ratio for the non-statistical decay of the excited 68Ni nuclei was measured and amounts to 24(4)%.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Invited Talk given at the 11th International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1, 2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

A large area timing RPC prototype for ion collisions in the HADES spectrometer

We present a resistive plate chamber (RPC) prototype for time-of-flight measurements over large areas and at high occupancies, minimizing the inter-channel cross-talk.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TJM-4D75GPD-9/1/a6fe40c114a867a0f98e2fec0f13350

The HADES Tracking System

The tracking system of the dielectron spectrometer HADES at GSI Darmstadt is formed out of 24 low-mass, trapezoidal multi-layer drift chambers providing in total about 30 square meter of active area. Low multiple scattering in the in total four planes of drift chambers before and after the magnetic field is ensured by using helium-based gas mixtures and aluminum cathode and field wires. First in-beam performance results are contrasted with expectations from simulations. Emphasis is placed on the energy loss information, exploring its relevance regarding track recognition.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, presented at the 10th Vienna Conference on Instrumentation, Vienna, February 2004, to be published in NIM A (special issue

Beyond the neutron drip line: The unbound oxygen isotopes (25)O and (26)O

This is the publisher's version, and is also available electronically from http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.88.034313.The very neutron-rich oxygen isotopes 25O and 26O are investigated experimentally and theoretically. The unbound states are populated in an experiment performed at the R3B-LAND setup at GSI via proton-knockout reactions from 26F and 27F at relativistic energies around 442 and 414 MeV/nucleon, respectively. From the kinematically complete measurement of the decay into 24O plus one or two neutrons, the 25O ground-state energy and width are determined, and upper limits for the 26O ground-state energy and lifetime are extracted. In addition, the results provide indications for an excited state in 26O at around 4 MeV. The experimental findings are compared to theoretical shell-model calculations based on chiral two- and three-nucleon (3N) forces, including for the first time residual 3N forces, which are shown to be amplified as valence neutrons are added