Probing nucleon-nucleon correlations via heavy ion transfer reactions

The revival of transfer reaction studies benefited from the construction of a new generation of large solid angle spectrometers, coupled to large γ arrays. The recent results of γ-particle coincident measurements demonstrate a strong interplay between single-particle and collective degrees of freedom that is pertinent to the reaction dynamics. Via transfer of pairs, valuable information on the component responsible for particle correlations has been derived. In this paper, some of the main advances in the field recently achieved are outlined. After a brief presentation of the experimental techniques involving heavy-ion magnetic spectrometers, the main characteristics of multinucleon transfer reaction are discussed