The (p,γ) reaction on thick target as a spectroscopic tool

When thick even-even targets around mass A-60 are bombarded with low energy protons the (p,γ) reaction excite a large number of resonances in the compound nucleus with a strong initial alignment. The statistical gamma decay of these states to the low lying discrete levels of the compound nucleus introduces some attenuation of the initial alignment. It is shown experimentally that the resulting alignment of the low discrete states is strong enough to permit usefull spectroscopic study of these states, since the resulting attenuation do not depend on the target or the bombarding energy being function of the spin of the level. This type of spectroscopy can be extended also to measure life-time of levels through Doppler-shift.