Measurement of parentage in stripping reactions of halo nuclei

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Recent experiments performed using the S800 spectrograph at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory have shed a new light on techniques to measure the valence wave function of halo nuclei. The momentum of the heavy fragment resulting from the stripping of the halo particle is measured by the spectrograph, and its final excited state is measured by means of a NaI -detector array located around the target. The large angular and momentum acceptances of the S800 provide a measurement of the full momentum vector. The analysis of the shape of the momentum distributions corresponding to different core fragment final states distinguishes between core excitations coming from reactions where a particle from the core—rather than the halo—is removed in the reaction, and components of the halo wave function where the halo particle is coupled to an excited state of the core. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.