J. A. Rodriguez

Novel technique for constraining r -process (n, γ) reaction rates

A novel technique has been developed, which will open exciting new opportunities for studying the very neutron-rich nuclei involved in the r process. As a proof of principle, the γ spectra from the β decay of ^{76}Ga have been measured with the SuN detector at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. The nuclear level density and γ-ray strength function are extracted and used as input to Hauser-Feshbach calculations. The present technique is shown to strongly constrain the ^{75}Ge(n,γ)^{76}Ge cross section and reaction rate.

The ReA electron-beam ion trap charge breeder for reacceleration of rare isotopes

ReA is a post-accelerator at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. ReA is designed to reaccelerate rare isotopes to energies of a few MeV/u following production by projectile fragmentation and thermalization in a gas cell. The facility consists of four main components: an electron-beam ion trap (EBIT) charge breeder, an achromatic charge-over-mass (Q/A) separator, a radio-frequency quadrupole accelerator, and a superconducting radio-frequency linear accelerator. The EBIT charge breeder was specifically designed to efficiently capture continuous beams of singly charged ions injected at low energy (<60 keV), charge breed in less than 50 ms, and extract highly charged ions to the Q/A separator for charge-state selection and reacceleration through the accelerator structures. The use of highly charged ions to reach high beam energies is a key aspect that makes ReA a compact and cost-efficient post-accelerator. The EBIT is characterized by a high-current electron gun, a...

A field programmable gate array-based time-resolved scaler for collinear laser spectroscopy with bunched radioactive potassium beams

A new data acquisition system including a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based time-resolved scaler was developed for laser-induced fluorescence and beam bunch coincidence measurements. The FPGA scaler was tested in a collinear laser-spectroscopy experiment on radioactive (37)K at the BEam COoler and LAser spectroscopy (BECOLA) facility at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. A 1.29 μs bunch width from the buncher and a bunch repetition rate of 2.5 Hz led to a background suppression factor of 3.1 × 10(5) in resonant photon detection measurements. The hyperfine structure of (37)K and its isotope shift relative to the stable (39)K were determined using 5 × 10(4) s(-1) (37)K ions injected into the BECOLA beam line. The obtained hyperfine coupling constants A((2)S(1/2)) = 120.3(1.4) MHz, A((2)P(1/2)) = 15.2(1.1) MHz, and A((2)P(3/2)) = 1.4(8) MHz, and the isotope shift δν(39, 37) = -264(3) MHz are consistent with the previously determined values, where available.