Some Thoughts on Opportunities with Reactions Using Radioactive Beams
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Published: 1990
Total Pages: 6
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DOWNLOAD EBOOKI was asked to talk about the use of radioactive beams for nuclear reactions. My overall perspective is that the scientific justification for such studies must be done carefully. To go to the added complexity of radioactive beams one must clearly demonstrate the need for obtaining information about nuclear structure or processes, information that is not otherwise available. On the other hand, much of what we know about nuclear structure comes from nuclear reactions with stable nuclear beams and targets. While a certain amount of information about far from stability nuclei may be obtained from the study of their radioactive decays, this is limited. Our knowledge and understanding of nuclear structure comes from stable nuclei: energy levels, their spins and parties, and very importantly the matrix elements characterizing them. These are largely determined by reaction studies with normal stable nuclei. The extension of such studies to unstable nuclei, far from stability, may well hold qualitative surprises, or at the very least give a firmer basis to our understanding of nuclear structure. Perhaps it is a matter of taste, but if one wishes to start on this endeavor then it is best to begin with simple, easily accessible features. The simplest'' nuclei are the ones that form doubly-closed shells and the easiest features to explore initially are the single-particle states and the collective excitations that one can build on these. I would like to emphasize that a unique facility for this type of study is about to come into operation in Darmstadt where the ESR storage ring will capture radioactive beams from fragmentation products and cool them to useful energies for reaction studies.