Medium energy heavy ion accelerator 14 UD Pelletron- a BARC-TIFR facility: a 5 year progress report 1989-1994

The medium energy heavy ion accelerator (MEHIA) facility based on 14 UD Pelletron set up under the collaborative project of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at the TIFR campus at Bombay has been serving as a joint BARC-TIFR facility for heavy-ion accelerator based research. As this accelerator has just completed five years of its successful operations, it has been thought to be an appropriate time to bring out a report of the research work carried out with the accelerator facility over these last five years. To put the research work in proper perspective, the present report is formatted to provide a short write-up highlighting the work carried out in each area of activity along with a list of the publications which have resulted from these investigations. Some theoretical work related to the experimental activities with the pelletron accelerator has also been included in the list of publications. The research work in the area of nuclear physics, which forms the main thrust of the research activities with the accelerator, covers areas of high spin states, high energy photons, resonances in heavy ion reactions, heavy ion elastic and transfer reactions, heavy ion fusion-fission reactions and radiochemical studies in heavy ion reactions. The interdisciplinary areas of research include condensed matter physics and accelerator based atomic physics. In addition to the above topics the present report also describes the work related to the pelletron accelerator and associated experimental facilities, gas detector development work, data acquisition systems and spectrometer for heavy recoil ions under development. The present status of the superconducting Linac booster project is also briefly described. (author). refs., tabs