Speaker
Description
A new pipeline for Coulomb-excitation studies has been developed at iThemba LABS with the first particle-gamma coincidence measurements carried out during a two-month campaign in April-May 2016 using an XIA-based digital DAQ. We used the reorientation effect to determine the spectroscopic quadrupole moment of the first high-lying excitation in Tz=0 self-conjugate nuclei (20Ne, 32S, 36Ar) - typically associated with clustering formation - and 40Ar. These measurements present higher accuracy than previous work and, surprisingly, for 20Ne, 36Ar and 40Ar they represent the first measurements done at safe bombarding energies, well below the Coulomb barrier, onto a heavy target. Our new results show a zig-zag pattern of nuclear shapes at the end of the sd shell and will be compared with state-of-the-art mean-field calculations. Five MSc degrees have been awarded from these data sets.
