Experimental Methods

Abstract

Three principal goals of these thesis are: (1) to systematically study the mechanisms of breakup in reactions of $^{7}\mathrm{Li}$ and $^{9}\mathrm{Be}$ with target nuclei from d to $^{209}\mathrm{Bi}$, (2) to measure breakup probabilities in order to estimate the contribution of breakup to above-barrier complete fusion suppressions and (3) to examine the feasibility of applying the experimental and analysis techniques used for the study of breakup to the astrophysically relevant reaction $^{7}\mathrm{Be}$(d,p) $^{8}\mathrm{Be}$. The unifying theme of these goals is the need to detect charged particles in coincidence with high efficiency. These measurements were performed with the ANU Breakup Array for Light Nuclei (BALiN), an array of four double-sided silicon strip detectors. In this chapter, the details of the measurement apparatus and techniques will be described, with a focus on the advances made to allow measurements with light to medium mass targets. The target nuclei studied in this work can be broadly categorised into $\text {``heavy mass''}$ ($^{144}\mathrm{Sm}$, $^{168}\mathrm{Er}$, $^{186}\mathrm{W}$, $^{196}\mathrm{Pt}$, $^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ and $^{209}\mathrm{Bi}$), $\text {``medium mass''}$ ($^{58}\mathrm{Ni}$, $^{27}\mathrm{Al}$ and $^{28}\mathrm{Si}$) and $\text {``light mass''}$ ((C$_2$D$_4$)$^n$, $^{12}\mathrm{C}$ and $^{16}\mathrm{O}$). It will be shown that the different masses result in different characteristic energy and angular distributions. This results in different experimental requirements that will be discussed here. All measurements in this thesis were made at the Australian National University Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF).

Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930