Half-lives of neutron-rich Cd 128-130

R. Dunlop et al. ; 6 págs.; 7 figs.; 1 tab. ; Rapid CommunicationsThe β-decay half-lives of Cd128-130 have been measured with the newly commissioned GRIFFIN γ-ray spectrometer at the TRIUMF-ISAC facility. The time structures of the most intense γ rays emitted following the β decay were used to determine the half-lives of Cd128 and Cd130 to be T1/2=246.2(21) ms and T1/2=126(4) ms, respectively. The half-lives of the 3/2+ and 11/2- states of Cd129 were measured to be T1/2(3/2+)=157(8) ms and T1/2(11/2-)=147(3) ms. The half-lives of the Cd isotopes around the N=82 shell closure are an important ingredient in astrophysical simulations to derive the magnitude of the second r-process abundance peak in the A∼130 region. Our new results are compared with recent literature values and theoretical calculations. ©2016 American Physical SocietyThis work has been partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chairs Program. I.D. and R.C.-F. are supported by NSERC Discovery Grants SAPIN-2014-00028 and RGPAS 462257-2014. A.J. acknowledges financial support by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under contract FPA2011-29854-C04 and the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under contract FPA2014- 57196-C5-4-P. S.L.T acknowledges financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation under contract NSF- 14-01574. E.P.-R. acknowledges financial support from the DGAPA-UNAM under the PASPA program. The GRIFFIN spectrometer was funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, TRIUMF, and the University of Guelph. TRIUMF receives federal funding via a contribution agreement with the National Research Council of Canada.Peer Reviewe

138Ba(d,α)^{138}{\rm Ba}(d,\alpha) study of states in 136Cs^{136}{\rm Cs}: Implications for new physics searches with xenon detectors

We used the $^{138}$Ba$(d,\alpha)$ reaction to carry out an in-depth study of states in $^{136}$Cs, up to around 2.5~MeV. In this work, we place emphasis on hitherto unobserved states below the first $1^+$ level, which are important in the context of solar neutrino and fermionic dark matter (FDM) detection in large-scale xenon experiments. We identify for the first time candidate metastable states in $^{136}$Cs, which would allow a real-time detection of solar neutrino and FDM events in xenon detectors, with high background suppression. Our results are also compared with shell-model calculations performed with three Hamiltonians that were previously used to evaluate the nuclear matrix element (NME) for $^{136}$Xe neutrinoless double beta decay. We find that one of these Hamiltonians, which also systematically underestimates the NME compared to the others, dramatically fails to describe the observed low-energy $^{136}$Cs spectrum, while the other two show reasonably good agreement

Observation of the 0+ 2 and γ bands in 98Ru, and shape coexistence in the Ru isotopes

Excited states in 98Ru were investigated using γ-ray spectroscopy following the β-decay of 98Rh, and via the 100Ru(p,t) reaction. Combining the results from the two experiments, two states were revised to have spin-parity of 4+ and subsequently assigned to the 02+ and “γ” bands, respectively. The observed structures in 98Ru are suggested to be deformed and rotational, rather than spherical and vibrational, and fit well into the systematics of these excitations in the Ru isotopes. The 02+ excitation is suggested as a shape coexisting configuration. This observation eliminates some of the last remaining candidates for nearly harmonic vibrational nuclei in the Z≈50 region. Beyond-mean-field calculations are presented that support shape coexistence throughout the Ru isotopes with N=52–62, and suggest a smooth evolution of the shape

The GRIFFIN facility for Decay-Spectroscopy studies at TRIUMF-ISAC

Gamma-Ray Infrastructure For Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei, GRIFFIN, is a new high-efficiency γ-ray spectrometer designed for use in decay spectroscopy experiments with low-energy radioactive ion beams provided by TRIUMF\u27s Isotope Separator and Accelerator (ISAC-I) facility. GRIFFIN is composed of sixteen Compton-suppressed large-volume clover-type high-purity germanium (HPGe) γ-ray detectors combined with a suite of ancillary detection systems and coupled to a custom digital data acquisition system. The infrastructure and detectors of the spectrometer as well as the performance characteristics and the analysis techniques applied to the experimental data are described