Nuclear structure and reaction studies with exotic nuclei at the FRS-ESR

¹ GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
² II. Physikalisches Institut, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 35392 Gießen, Germany

^a Corresponding author: c.scheidenberger@gsi.de

Published online: 20 March 2014

Abstract

Nuclear physics with exotic nuclei in storage rings was pioneered at the SIS-ESR facility in combination with the fragment separator FRS. Already the first experiments in the early 1990s gave access to ground-state properties like masses and half-lives and indicated the research potential of this novel instrumental approach. Many new data have been obtained and interesting phenomena have been explored, e.g. the mass surface was mapped over large areas of the chart of nuclei, isomer studies of long-lived states (with half-lives of the order minutes) became possible, the modification of decay properties for highly-charged, high-Z exotic nuclei was observed, and new decay modes, like the beta-decay to bound final states, were studied for the first time. A few years ago, direct reaction experiments on internal targets using inverse kinematics were started: transfer and pickup reactions of astrophysical interest were performed with stable isotopes at energies approaching the Gamow-window, while elastic and inelastic scattering experiments were performed with secondary beams of the unstable doubly magic isotope ⁵⁶Ni quite recently. In this contribution, the achievements will be reviewed and recent results will be presented. It is dedicated to Paul Kienle.