Experimentele studies van toestanden in 69Ni via de 68Ni(d,p) reactie in de ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer

This research aims to investigate the properties of exotic nuclei. Such systems, having an excess of neutrons or protons, are ideal candidates to emphasize hidden aspects of the interactions at work between the nucleons. In particular, we focus on the region near 68Ni (Z=28, N=40), one of the regions of the nuclear chart in which shape coexistence is observed. Previous studies have shown that the neutron d5/2 orbital is strongly contributing to the deformation of the nuclei in this region. In order to study these effects, the transfer reaction 68Ni(d,p) was performed at ISOLDE, the radioactive beam facility of CERN (Switzerland). We utilized the ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer, a setup optimized for transfer reactions, to detect the reaction products. The experiment revealed a number of new excited states including (at least) two related to the d5/2 orbital. These findings were compared with theoretical results from Large-Scale Shell Model calculations, extracting a larger gap between the neutron g9/2 and d5/2 orbitals. This new information leads to the prediction of an inversion of the orbitals in 60Ca.