The ISAC facility at TRIUMF is able to produce intense beams of mass-separated radioactive isotopes of the alkali and the rare earth elements with unprecedented intensities. This will allow us to extend the studies of exotic nuclei for these elements further away from the valley of stability into regions so far inaccessible at other facilities, thus allowing a more stringent test of the descriptive and predictive power of the models.
We have started a laser spectroscopy program at ISAC. This effort, which involves groups and researchers from the U.S. (TAMU), Japan (JAERI), and Canada (McGill and Calgary Universities) is based on collinear laser spectroscopy in a fast beam. In this method, atoms or ions are excited by laser light in collinear geometry. In this way measurements of the optical isotope shift yield the nuclear charge radii and measurements of the hyperfine structure the nuclear moments. Our program investigates a new region of deformation for the neutron deficient isotopes of the rare earth elements.
