The lives of excited nuclei & their measurements at the femto scale

Measurements of level lifetimes have assumed much significance in the domain of nuclear structure research, particularly for catering to a stringent validation of the different excitation phenomena being unravelled in the contemporary endeavours. The most commonly encountered lifetimes in spectroscopic measurements are those in the range of few tens of femto seconds to few picoseconds, which are measured using the Doppler Shift Attenuation Method (DSAM). This presentation aspires to discuss DSAM in the context of the recent developments led by our Group at the Kolkata Centre of UGC-DAE CSR. The same have facilitated expanding the applicability of DSAM to the widest choice of experimental conditions and deeper insights about the impact of residue trajectories on the observed Doppler shifts of the gamma-ray transition energies. The developments in the area of lifetime measurements using DSAM have been a part of the inhouse research programme of Nuclear Physics Group at the UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata Centre