The production and use of a 148Gd charged particle target in a spectroscopic study of 147Gd

This thesis discusses the nuclear structure of 147Gd elucidated by the neutron pickup reactions (p,d), (d,t) and (3He,α) on the unstable 148Gd target. The neutron pickup reaction on 148Gd probes the two-particle-one-hole states by the pickup of neutrons in the shell model orbitals below the N = 82 gap and one-particle states by pickup of neutrons in shell model orbitals above the N = 82 gap. Our experiments will provide information on the location of neutron single-particle energies which can be used for shell-model calculations in the 146Gd region. The 2-particle-1-hole (2p-1h) states which are probed directly by the neutron transfer reaction in the experiments with the 148Gd target, will bear indirectly on the energies of one-hole states in 145Gd. They will also provide information on the strongest single-particle states in 147Gd because all the single-particle states in the 148Gd target are partially occupied because of the mixing by the pairing interaction. 107 refs., 23 figs., 20 tabs