Experimental Evidence of He2 Decay from Ne18 Excited States

Two-proton decay from Ne18 excited states has been studied by complete kinematical reconstruction of the decay products. The Ne18 nucleus has been produced as a radioactive beam by Ne20 primary projectile fragmentation at 45AMeV incident energy on a Be target. The Ne18 at 33AMeV incident energy has been excited via Coulomb excitation on a Pbnat target. The obtained results unambiguously show that the 6.15 MeV Ne18 state two-proton decay proceeds through a He2 diproton resonance (31%) and democratic or virtual sequential decay (69%). The quoted branching ratio has been deduced from relative angle and momentum correlations of the emitted proton pairs.