Measurement of the dipole response of neutron-rich nuclei in the A∼20 region

Abstract Coulomb break up of the neutron-rich 15,17 C and 17–22 O isotopes has been studied experimentally using secondary beams at energies of 500–600 MeV/u. A comparison between differential cross sections, d σ/ d E ∗ , with that obtained from a binary model shows that the main ground-state configuration of 15 C is 14 C(0 + )⊗ ν S 1/2 as expected. For 17 C, our preliminary data analysis reveals that the predominant (∼64%) configuration of the ground state is 16 C(2 + )⊗ ν s , d . For 17–22 O, the low-lying E1 strength amounts up to about 12% of the energy weighted sum rule strength depending on neutron number. The energy weighted E1 strength (integrated up to 15 MeV excitation energy) increases up to 20 O then decreases for 21,22 O. These data are compared to a shell model calculation.