Shell gap reduction in neutron-rich N=17 nuclei

Abstract The spectroscopy of 27 Ne has been investigated through the one-neutron transfer reaction 26 Ne( d , p ) 27 Ne in inverse kinematics at 9.7 MeV/nucleon. The results strongly support the existence of a low-lying negative parity state in 27 Ne, which is a signature of a reduced sd–fp shell gap in the N = 16 neutron-rich region, at variance with stable nuclei.