Study of Properties of Nuclei far from Stability at GANIL

Abstract

There is certainly no need, at this place, to stress the interest of systematic studies of nuclei as far away from stability as possible. One may mention, just for citing a prominent example, the renormalization of the axial-vector strength in nuclear β-decay by the spectroscopic study of the T₇=-2 nucleus ³²Ar[1], The experiments on isotopes situated in the borderland off nuclear stability are however difficult due to the sharp fall-off of the production cross sections. The remedy of bombarding very thick targets with intense beams of high-energy protons (as done, for example, at the ISOLDE facility at CERN) is often of only limited success: the diffusion time out of such targets [2] may become prohibitive for the short lifetimes of very exotic species. Then, the inverse method, i.e. the fragmentation of a heavy-ion beam, even of moderate intensity may prove competitive as has been demonstrated by the pioneering experiments at the BEYALAC by Symons et al. [3].