First observation of the unbound nucleus 15Ne.

We report on the first observation of the unbound proton-rich nucleus 15Ne. Its ground state and first excited state were populated in two-neutron knockout reactions from a beam of 500 MeV/u 17Ne. The 15Ne ground state is found to be unbound by 2.

Study of the 14Be continuum: identification and structure of its second 2+ state.

The coupling between bound quantum states and those in the continuum is of high theoretical interest. Experimental studies of bound drip-line nuclei provide ideal testing grounds for such investigations since they, due to the feeble binding energy of their valence particles, are easy to excite into the continuum. In this Letter, continuum states in the heaviest particle-stable Be isotope, 14Be, are studied by employing the method of inelastic proton scattering in inverse kinematics.

Dielectron production in 12C+12C collisions at 2A GeV with the HADES spectrometer.

The invariant-mass spectrum of e+e- pairs produced in 12C+12C collisions at an incident energy of 2 GeV per nucleon has been measured for the first time. The measured pair production probabilities span over 5 orders of magnitude from the pi(0)-Dalitz to the rho/omega invariant-mass region. Dalitz decays of pi(0) and eta account for all the yield up to 0.

Evidence for pygmy and giant dipole resonances in 130Sn and 132Sn.

The dipole strength distribution above the one-neutron separation energy was measured in the unstable 130Sn and the double-magic 132Sn isotopes. The results were deduced from Coulomb dissociation of secondary Sn beams with energies around 500 MeV/nucleon, produced by in-flight fission of a primary 238U beam. In addition to the giant dipole resonance, a resonancelike structure ("pygmy resonance") is observed at a lower excitation energy around 10 MeV exhausting a few percent of the isovector E1 energy-weighted sum rule.

Evidence for multiphonon giant resonances in electromagnetic fission of 238U.

Differential cross sections for electromagnetic fission of 238U projectiles (500 MeV/u) in C, Sn, and Pb targets are measured and analyzed in terms of single- and multiphonon giant resonance excitations as doorway states to fission. A novel experimental method exploits the linear relationship between neutron multiplicity and the primary 238U excitation energy. Multiphonon states contribute up to 20% of the cross section; a component at high excitation energies is indicated that may arise from three-phonon dipole and two-phonon GDR x GQRiv giant resonance excitations.