This three-year grant will support research by a faculty member, a Senior Research Associate and three graduate students to investigate the structure of heavy nuclei excited by Coulomb excitation reactions using heavy ion beams. The research makes use of the large gamma ray detector array, Gammasphere, which is presently located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During the period of this grant this facility will be moved to the ATLAS facility at Argonne National Laboratory to take advantage of other beams available there. Using NSF funds, the Rochester group has constructed a 4-pi charged particle detector (Compact Heavy Ion Counter) which can be used together with Gammasphere to considerably enhance its utility for these measurements. Partial support will be provided by the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA), as part of an enabling initiative in instrumentation development, to provide for the modifications needed to CHICO in order to use it at ATLAS and for needed computer hardware for data analysis. The Rochester group will continue using the methods already developed in their past research to exploit these new opportunities.
