Reactions Induced by Radioactive Projectiles

There are a few hundred stable nuclei but several thousand nuclei that are radioactive and have experimentally useful lifetimes. Since 1990, one of the fastest growing areas of research in nuclear science has been the study of nuclear reactions induced by radioactive projectiles. Using either ISOL (/sotope Separator On-Line) or PF (Projectile Fragmentation) techniques, several hundred new radioactive nuclear beams have become available (see Chapter 14). 

The principal attraction in these studies is the ability to form reaction products or reaction intermediates with unusual N/Z ratios. By starting with nuclei that are either very proton rich or very neutron rich, new regions of nuclei can be reached and their properties studied. At higher energies, the unusual isospin of the intermediate species allows one to determine the effect of isospin on the properties of highly excited 

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