The Structure of 34Mg Nuclei

In the chart of nuclides, there exists an area near the N=20 shell closure where the ground states of some isotopes exhibit characteristics of deformed nuclei with an intruder configuration rather than being spherical. This area is known as an “island of inversion”, and the deformed ground states that characterize it are caused by particle hole excitations over a reduced shell gap. This project is part of an ongoing investigation into the island of inversion using beta decay as a probe to study the low-energy structure. For this summer project, the beta-decay of 34Mg into 34Al was observed and the data from this decay was used to create a decay level scheme for 34Al. To collect the products of this decay, a beam of 34Mg was sent to a moving-tape collector system surrounded by plastic scintillators (SCEPTAR) and high-purity germanium detectors (GRIFFIN) at TRIUMF in Vancouver, BC. The data from this decay was collected into ROOT files, energy calibrated, corrected for gain differences and shifts, and sorted into a decay level scheme for 34Al. Future work on this project includes the use of angular correlations between gamma transitions to determine spins and parities of excited states of 34Al.