Speaker
Description
Thermal neutron capture gamma-ray spectroscopy and prompt gamma-ray
spectroscopy of fission fragments are powerful tools to obtain detailed nuclear
structure information for nuclides close to stability and medium mass neutron-
rich isotopes. This nuclear structure information can be used for the test of
nuclear models, as well as for the extraction of quantities important for nuclear
applications. The power of coupling a high-efficiency Ge detector array with an
intense pencil-like neutron beam provided by the ILL reactor, has been recently
demonstrated by the success of the EXILL (EXogam at ILL) campaign. This
success led to the installation of permanent setup at ILL, the new instrument
FIPPS (FIssion Product Prompt Spectrometer). In its first phase, it consists of a
halo-free pencil neutron beam incident on a target surrounded by an array of 8
Ge clovers. This setup has been commissioned in Dec. 2016 and it has recently
been exploited for a variety of (n,gamma) experiments. Also fissile and
radioactive targets will be used. In a second phase it will be complemented
with a recoil spectrometer based on a gas filled magnet. This will increase the
sensitivity and selectivity for nuclear spectroscopy of fission products and
enable fission studies of the correlation between excitation energy, angular
momentum and kinetic energy.
After a review of the most significant physics output of the EXILL campaign, the
FIPPS instrument will be described. The present performance of the setup will
be shown, together with a summary of the results of the first experimental
campaign. Future perspectives and physics opportunities will be discussed.
