Prospects for electron scattering on unstable, exotic nuclei

Abstract Electron scattering off radioactive ions becomes feasible for the first time due to advances in storage ring and trapping techniques in conjunction with intense secondary beams from novel beam facilities. Using a point-like purely leptonic probe enables the investigation of charge distributions and electromagnetic excitations in β -unstable exotic nuclei with an enhanced overshoot in proton and neutron numbers and the use of QED, one of the most precisely studied theories, for describing the scattering process.