Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2020) 135: 165
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00155-8

Regular Article

Experimental studies of clustering in light nuclei: ^11,12,13,16C

¹ Department of Experimental Physics, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Bijenička 54, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia
² Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II & INFN-Sezione di Napoli, Napoli, Italy

^* e-mail: daniele.dellaquila@irb.hr

Received: 15 September 2019
Accepted: 18 November 2019
Published online: 28 January 2020

Abstract

Different, complementary, techniques are used to experimentally probe clustering aspects in several carbon isotopes: C. Our approaches involve breakup reactions with radioactive cocktail beams (C), compound nucleus reactions and resonant scattering at low energies (C), and direct reactions with the detection of in-flight resonance decay fragments (C). In this paper, we discuss results of our experimental campaign: in C, we unveil the existence of a new excited state, characterized by clustering nature, at an excitation energy of 9.36 MeV (); the decay path of the Hoyle state in C (7.654 MeV, ) is investigated with unprecedented precision; we refine the spectroscopy of C above the -threshold supporting the possible appearance of the molecular bands, based on the Be structure, previously discussed in the literature; in C, we find evidence for He–Be decays. Our findings have an impact on the understanding of clustering phenomena in light nuclear systems.