Halo nuclei have been a prolific field of Nuclear Physics since its discovery together with the dawn of radioactive beam facilities. The halo is formed by one or two weakly bound nucleons orbiting around the rest of nucleons that conforms a compact core. Following this picture, halo nuclei are often treated within two- or three-body valence-core models, considering an inert core. However, the...
A key element to explain the binding of loosely bound Borromean halo nuclei is the correlation between the halo neutrons [1,2]. The characterization of the dineutron correlation, understood as a spatially localized $n$-$n$ pair, is therefore an important step in the description of the neutron dripline. Various experimental techniques have been used in recent years to probe these correlations,...
Investigation of the 6H and 7H isotopes, has long history going up to these days. These the most neutron rich systems with the biggest ratio of mass-over charge, which makes these systems attractive to study. The high intensity 8He secondary beam with energy 26 AMeV, produced at the recently commissioned ACCULINNA-2 fragment separator [1], was used for the population of the systems of interest...
Studies of few-nucleon systems form the basis for understanding nuclear interactions and properties of nuclei. The very accurate theoretical calculations for three-nucleon systems should be confronted with a rich set of precise experimental data.
For this purpose, the BINA (Big Instrument for Nuclear-polarization Analysis) detection system has been installed at CCB (Cyclotron Center...
The Trojan Horse method (THM) is a well-established experimental technique to measure nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest avoiding the suppression of the Coulomb barrier affecting experimental direct measurements.
I will describe some of the THM studies involving few-body system of interest for both nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics, such as the sub-Coulomb proton-proton...
Carbon burning is a key step in the evolution of massive stars, Type 1a supernovae and superbursts in x-ray binary systems. Determining the $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C fusion cross section at relevant energies by extrapolation of direct measurements is challenging due to resonances at and below the Coulomb barrier. A study of the $^{24}$Mg($\alpha$,$\alpha$')$^{24}$Mg reaction has identified several...
Light exotic nuclei are so close to neutron or proton driplines that they are usually described within two- or three-body models made of an inert spherical core and one or two nucleons barely bound. However, deformation plays a key role in certain areas of the Segrè Chart, thus the need of going beyond a spherical picture for certain nuclei. This is the case of $^{17}$C.
Deformed two-body...
The current understanding of the light hypernuclei, sub-atomic nuclei with strangeness, is challenged and studied in detail by several European research groups and collaborations [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
In recent years, hypernuclear studies performed using high-energy heavy ion beams have reported unexpected results on the three-body hypernuclear state $_\Lambda^3$H, named the hypertriton. Its...
Nuclear systems such as 6He, 11Li, 11Be, 14Be are known to have extended neutron distributions: the so-called neutron halos [1, 2]. This feature occurs when the separation energy of valence neutrons is much smaller than the average binding energy per nucleon in a nucleus, so they can tunnel out of the nuclear potential to large distances with sizable probability. It has been an intense...
The β$^+$/Ec-decay of the proton halo nucleus $^8B$ into $^8 Be$ is interesting for astrophysics and nuclear structure. From the astrophysical point of view, β-decay is the main source of high-energy solar neutrinos above 2 MeV and thus, the main contributor to what was known as the “solar neutrino problem” [1]. On the nuclear structure side, this decay can be used to probe the structure of...
The low-lying structure of $^{15}$C has been investigated via the neutron-removal d($^{16}$C, t) reaction. The experiment was performed at GANIL using a secondary $^{16}$C beam produced by fragmentation in the LISE spectrometer at 17.2 MeV/nucleon with an intensity of 5 × 10$^{4}$ pps and 100\% purity. The angle and energy of the light ejectile were detected by three MUST2 telescopes [1,2]....
In this contribution we will discuss new results obtained by performing high precision experiments of proton induced transmutation of fluorine in direct kinematics, with the aim of studying both the α_0 and α_π reaction channels, leading respectively to the 16O residual nucleus in the ground and the first excited states. This reaction has been subject of a large interest in recent times, both...
One of the long-standing question facing nuclear physics is understanding the forces acting between nucleons. In a medium energy range the properties of such system are successfully modeled with the use if realistic potentials, supplemented with the three-nucleon force (3NF) models, Coulomb force etc. In recent years the more fundamental approach based on chiral effective field theory become a...
