Coincident Measurements of 176Lu Level Structure for Nuclear Astrophysics using ICEBall and GEORGINA

The stellar production of $^{176}$Lu is synthesized via the s-process only. There is a long lived ground state (K=7) and short lived isomer (K=1), which do not communicate directly, however if there is an indirect communication between these levels it will affect the decay of $^{176}$Lu in astrophysical environments.\footnote{K.T. Lesko et al. Phys. Rev. C, 77, 2850 (1991)} Recently, new measurements have found several low-lying intermediate states that indirectly communicate to both the ground and isomeric state.\footnote{G.D. Dracoulis et al. Phys. Rev. C, 81, 011301 (2010)} Thus, to further investigate the low level structure of $^{176}$Lu, states were populated using a $^{176}$Yb(p,n) reaction with a 7.75 MeV bunched beam provided by the FN Tandem at the University of Notre Dame. Both conversion electrons and gamma-rays were detected in coincidence between the ICEBall array and two single-crystal germanium detectors from the GEORGINA array. The results from this experiment will be discussed. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under contract number NSF PHY-1068192.