Identification of Fission and Fragmentation Products from ²³⁸U at the NSCL

The ability to resolve and identify particles up to atomic number Z~92 is an important goal for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. It is anticipated that a large fraction of experiments will use ²³⁸U to produce radioactive ion beams (RIB) at a similar energies relative to that currently employed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). Projectile fragmentation serves as a powerful experimental tool to access exotic radioactive nuclei approaching the proton/neutron driplines and is the primary RIB production method at the NSCL. The A1900 fragment separator is the main apparatus used to select and purify radioactive beams. The ability to separate, resolve and identify fragments becomes more challenging with increasing Z. At intermediate energies, projectile-like fragments produced from ²³⁸U are the most challenging in part due to the many charge states that an isotope populates. To address this challenge, an experiment was conducted at the NSCL to identify nuclei produced from the fragmentation/fission of an E/A= 80 MeV/u ²³⁸U  beam. The experimental technique and results from the first successful identification of fragments up to Z~93 will be presented.