Eur. Phys. J. A (2016) 52: 99
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2016-16099-8

Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory

Analysis methods of safe Coulomb-excitation experiments with radioactive ion beams using the GOSIA code

¹ CEA Saclay, IRFU/SPhN, F-91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern- en Stralingsfysica, B-3001, Leuven, Belgium
³ School of Engineering, University of the West of Scotland, PA1 2BE, Paisley, UK
⁴ Heavy Ion Laboratory, University of Warsaw, PL-00-681, Warsaw, Poland
⁵ GANIL, BP-5027, F-14076, Caen Cedex, France
⁶ University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Physics, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014, Jyvaskyla, Finland
⁷ Helsinki Institute of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O.Box 64, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
⁸ Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK-CEN, 2400, Mol, Belgium
⁹ Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, D-64289, Darmstadt, Germany

^* e-mail: magda.zielinska@cea.fr

Received: 16 July 2015
Accepted: 25 February 2016
Published online: 20 April 2016

Abstract

With the recent advances in radioactive ion beam technology, Coulomb excitation at safe energies becomes an important experimental tool in nuclear-structure physics. The usefulness of the technique to extract key information on the electromagnetic properties of nuclei has been demonstrated since the 1960s with stable beam and target combinations. New challenges present themselves when studying exotic nuclei with this technique, including dealing with low statistics or number of data points, absolute and relative normalisation of the measured cross-sections and a lack of complementary experimental data, such as excited-state lifetimes and branching ratios. This paper addresses some of these common issues and presents analysis techniques to extract transition strengths and quadrupole moments utilising the least-squares fit code, GOSIA.