A Dual Phase TPC/Thick-gem Based Target to Study Unbound Nuclei

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) is currently being constructed on the campus of Michigan State University. When completed, FRIB will become an unprecedented low energy nuclear physics facility in the world to study neutron rich nuclei with heavy ion beams. The MoNA Collaboration, which consists of 11 institutions, has been involved at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory for almost two decades. Hampton University joined the collaboration in 2013 and led the development of a Si-Be segmented target that was used to measure the lifetime of ²⁶O and neutron unbound states in the island of inversion using the invariant mass technique. This target provided for the first time detail information about the incident beam position and energy, before and exiting the Be targets to within 10%. A proposal to construct a dual-phase based time-projection chamber is being investigated by the MoNA Collaboration since it would increase the position and energy resolutions, and allow missing mass reconstruction by detecting the recoil fragments. Results from a realistic Geant4 Monte Carlo that include expected performances of this proposed target will be presented.