Study of ^34mCl beam production at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

The ³⁴Cl(p,γ)³⁵Ar reaction is an important step in the study of the creation of heavy nuclei during the rapid proton capture nucleosynthesis (r-p process) in supernova. Study of this reaction is important for reducing uncertainties in supernova model. Such studies are largely dependent on being able to maximize the ³⁴Cl isomer beam content. One of such experiment was carried out at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) β-decay experimental station to determine the optimum isomeric ratio in the production of ³⁴Cl. Ions from the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) at NSCL was implanted on a 3 mm thick CeBr₃ implantation detector and subsequent decay was detected using 16 Segmented Germanium Array (SeGA) detectors. The ³⁴Cl was identified using the Time-of-Flight (TOF) and energy loss (△E) information between a scintillator and a silicon PIN detector. To probe and maximize the isomeric beam content of ³⁴Cl, 6 different beam settings were utilized where 2 of the beam settings altered its beam angle before entering the A1900 fragment separator. Three gamma rays (1177, 2127, 3304 keV) corresponding to the decay of ³⁴Cl were detected in the SeGA detectors and this further resulted into the calculation of the absolute rate for each energy. The overall number of ³⁴Cl counts delivered was also calculated to finalize the isomeric beam content for each beam setting.