Production of exotic nuclear isomers in multi-nucleon transfer reactions

This paper reports on recent work using multinucleon transfer reactions to populate metastable states in neutron-rich, rare-earth and transitional nuclei with Ã180-200. The use of a position sensitive gas-filled detector, CHICO, allowed the directions of the binary fragments to be measured, thereby enabling event-by-event Doppler corrections to be made for the prompt, in-beam transitions depopulating the nuclei of interest. By using the temporal calibration provided by (i) the measurement of the binary reaction fragments and (ii) the natural pulsing of the cyclotron beam, transitions from metastable states with lifetimes in the nano-to-microsecond regime could be identified. The complementarity of this technique with the novel use of relativistic projectile fragmentation reactions is outlined, together with potential future avenues for this research, with a particular emphasis on the population of exotic isomeric states at high angular momentum and excitation energy values © 2004 by ASTRO Ltd.