γ-spectroscopy and radioactive beams: search for highly deformed exotic nuclei

This work is devoted to the search for highly deformed nuclei under extreme conditions of isospin, located near the proton drip-line, around A ∼ 130. The experiment was performed at GANIL (Caen) with the SPIRAL radioactive beam facility. The nuclei of interest were produced by fusion-evaporation reactions induced by the neutron deficient Kr76 radioactive beam (T1/2 = 14.8 h). γ-rays were detected by the EXOGAM array, composed of 11 segmented germanium clover detectors, for which a new segment calibration method has been developed. To extract fusion-evaporation events of a overwhelming background due to the radioactivity of the beam, the EXOGAM array was coupled with the light charged particle detector DIAMANT and the high acceptance VAMOS spectrometer. The latter was used for the first time to detect fusion-evaporation residues. The detailed data analysis allowed us to demonstrate that the EXOGAM + DIAMANT + VAMOS coupling is operational and essential to investigate the structure of these nuclei. Furthermore, the first γ transition was observed in the very exotic odd-odd Pm130 nucleus. The results have been interpreted with static and dynamic self-consistent microscopic calculations in collaboration with the Theoretical Physicists of the IPN Lyon. (author)