Speaker
Description
Clustering in nuclei provides an alternative description to their nuclear structure in addition to the Nuclear Shell Model. Although alpha ($^4$He nucleus) clusters are widely accepted to be essential to the understanding of the structure of light nuclei, such as the Hoyle state in $^{12}$C, it was experimentally observed in heavy nuclei only recently in $^{212}$Po. The observation showed that $^{212}$Po had mixed shell and cluster configurations, where the structure of $^{212}$Po could be explained by an alpha cluster coupled to the doubly-magic $^{208}$Pb core. In particular, the clustering structure resulted in enhanced $E1$ (electric dipole) transitions from non-natural parity states, which were measured using gamma-ray spectroscopy.
Another recent experiment at INFN Legnaro observed an excess cross section for the parasitic $^{122}$Sn($^{13}$C,$^9$Be)$^{126}$Te reaction. Because the fusion-evaporation cross section for this channel was negligible in PACE4 calculations, the $^{126}$Te was likely populated through an alpha transfer reaction which suggests alpha-clustering in its structure. In this experiment gamma rays were detected with the GALILEO array which is composed of 25 Compton-suppressed HPGe detectors while charged particles with particle identification were detected in the EUCLIDES $E-\Delta E$ $4\pi$ Si-ball array. Gamma-ray spectroscopy with coincidence techniques, such as particle-particle, particle-gamma, and gamma-gamma, is underway to extract previously unobserved transitions and levels in $^{126}$Te from this data set. Preliminary results from the Legnaro data, together with plans for a future experiment, will be presented and discussed.
| Your Email | twa73@sfu.ca |
|---|---|
| Supervisor | Corina Andreoiu |
| Supervisor Email | caa12@sfu.ca |
| Funding Agency | NSERC |
