“MAVR” First experiment

In December 2018, the first experiment was carried out at the heavy ion beam of the U-400 accelerator with the use of the high-resolution magnetic spectrometer (the MAVR facility) in the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions.

MAVR team at the setup

The spectrometer has unique characteristics that allow studying nuclear reactions with stable and radioactive beams. During the first run at the accelerator’s beam, characteristics of the spectrometer were measured: its effectiveness, the impulse resolution, peak sensing, and the purification coefficient of reaction products from the primary beam.
All these parameters corresponded to the estimated values and made it possible to measure the characteristics of reaction products with high resolution and efficiency at a wide range of angles, including that at the angle of 0 degrees with respect to the beam.
In the first experiment, a reaction with the beam of 18О was studied, which allows the method of missing masses to measure the energy spectrum of the exotic 16С nucleus (consisting of 3 alpha particles and a possible halo of 4 neutrons) and thus draw conclusions about its structure.
The scientific programme of MAVR was discussed at the International Symposium on Exotic Nuclei (EXON 2018) that was held in September 2018.
The spectrometer was developed in cooperation with scientific centres of Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, and Vietnam.

(Source: JINR News, December 2018)