TIARA: A large solid angle silicon array for direct reaction studies with radioactive beams

Abstract

A compact, quasi-4 pi position sensitive silicon array. TIARA, designed to study direct reactions induced by radioactive beams in inverse kinematics is described here. The Transfer and Inelastic All-angle Reaction Array (TIARA) consists of 8 resistive charge division detectors forming an octagonal barrel around the target and a set of double-sided silicon-strip annular detectors positioned at each end of the barrel. The detector was coupled to the gamma-ray array EXOGAM and the spectrometer VAMOS at the GANIL Laboratory to demonstrate the potential of such an apparatus with radioactive beams. The N-14(d,p)N-15 reaction, well known in direct kinematics, has been carried out in inverse kinematics for that purpose. The observation of the N-15 ground state and excited states at 7.16 and 7.86 MeV is presented here as well as the comparison of the measured proton angular distributions with DWBA calculations. Transferred l-values are in very good agreement with both theoretical calculations and previous experimental results obtained in direct kinematics. ; The collaboration wishes to thank the GANIL cyclotron operations crew for delivering the 14N beam.Partial support from the European Union under contract No506065 and from the Spanish MEC Grant FPA2005-03993 are also gratefully acknowledged. The development and construction of TIARA were financed by an EPSRC(UK) grant. ; Peer reviewed