The principal investigator and three to four undergraduate students will carry out the experimental nuclear physics research program of the University of Michigan, Dearborn. One major thrust of the program will be the investigation of radioactive nuclear beams produced at the NSCL by employing three different techniques. First, differential cross sections for the elastic scattering of the beams from stable nuclei will be measured over side angular ranges. The optical model and folding model analyses of the data will provide information of the structure and interaction properties of these unstable nuclei. Second, the outermost nucleon will be knocked out by a proton, and the angular and energy distributions of both the proton and ejectile will be measured. From the DWIA analyses of the data, momentum distributions, binding energies, angular momenta and core-nucleon correlations will be obtained. Third, measurement of reaction cross sections will identify halo characteristics and details of nuclear and electromagnetic dissociations. The overall goal is to derive anomalous characteristics peculiar to radioactive nuclei. Another major thrust will be the study of heavy ion reactions to obtain more insight into the reaction mechanism and to derive parameters that will contribute towards the determination of the nuclear equation of state. In particular emissions from non-compact geometry (with low-density interior) and radial flow will be examined.
