MINOS: A vertex tracker coupled to a thick liquid-hydrogen target for in-beam spectroscopy of exotic nuclei

MINOS is a new apparatus dedicated to in-beam nuclear structure experiments with low-intensity exotic beams in inverse kinematics at intermediate energies above 150MeV/nucleon. The device is composed of a thick liquid-hydrogen target coupled to a compact time projection chamber (TPC) serving as a vertex tracker. Either used for in-beam gamma spectroscopy of bound excited states or invariant-mass spectroscopy of unbound states, MINOS aims at improving the luminosity by a very significant factor compared to standard solid-target material experiments while improving experimental resolutions.