The (18O, 16O) reaction as a probe for nuclear spectroscopy

The response of nuclei to the (18O, 16O) two-neutron transfer reaction at 84 MeV incident energy has been systematically studied at the Catania INFN-LNS laboratory. The experiments were performed using several solid targets from light (9Be, 11B, 12,13C, 16O, 28Si) to heavy ones (58,64Ni, 120Sn, 208Pb). The 16O ejectiles were detected at forward angles by the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. Exploiting the large momentum acceptance (−10%, +14%) and solid angle (50 msr) of the spectrometer, energy spectra were obtained with a relevant yield up to about 20 MeV excitation energy. The application of the powerful trajectory reconstruction technique did allow to get energy spectra with energy resolution of about 150 keV and angular distributions with angular resolution better than 0.3°. A common feature observed with light nuclei is the appearance of unknown resonant structures at high excitation energy. The strong population of these latter together with the measured width can reveal the excitation of a collective...