Research highlights from the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility

The purpose of this paper is to present the scope of research carried out at the new Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility (HHIRF) at Oak Ridge. In Section 2 a brief description of HHIRF will be given, together with its current status. Section 3 will be devoted to microscopic aspects of reactions between nuclei, with reference to the prospects for the study of giant resonances by means of heavy ions, and to studies of elastic and inelastic scattering of 60Ni nuclei. Macroscopic aspects of nuclear reactions will be illustrated in Section 4 by means of the study of collisions between 58Ni nuclei at 15.1 MeV/u and by means of Spin Spectrometer (crystal ball) studies of the 19F + 159Tb reaction. In Section 5 results will be presented for lifetime measurements of high-spin states in yterbium nuclei. (orig./HSI)