Active collimators in experiments with exotic nuclear beams

Abstract

The active collimator method for experiments with exotic nuclear beams at energies near the Coulomb barrier of nuclear reactions is described. The technique is based on the use of detectors composed of microchannel plates (MCPs) and thin strips of metal foils (Au, Ag, Al) with a thickness of 200–300 μg/cm² or less, which are oriented along axes X and Y (axis Z is collinear to the beam axis). Exotic nuclei passing through the foils are detected by the MCPs by electron emission from these foils, which provides a means for obtaining spatial information on the particle trajectory and the time mark of an event. The proposed setup is characterized by the smallest (of the available techniques) material budget on the particle path (≤8.0 × 10¹⁷ atoms/cm²) in the zone of detected particles, the high efficiency (ɛ ∼ 90% for every MCP), and the time resolution sufficient for performing additional identification of radioactive nuclei using the time-of-flight method.