PRISMA is an experiment devoted to the study of heavy-ion reactions around the Coulomb barrier, particularly fusion and two-body reactions like multi-nucleon transfer.
In this energy range, the reaction dynamics is strongly affected by the structure of the interacting nuclei, leading to complex and interesting phenomena.
Fusion and two-body reactions have different requirements concerning the detection techniques and consequently the experimental activity of PRISMA relies
on two different set-ups: an Electrostatic Deflector for fusion and
the Magnetic Spectrometer PRISMA (the collaboration's namesake) for two-body reactions.
The equipment is based at the
Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL), and exploits the laboratory's Tandem-Alpi-Piave accelerator facility
providing stable heavy-ion beams up to 20 MeV/nucleon, but we are looking forward to using the exotic beams which will be delivered by the
SPES facility now being developed.
The large acceptance and ion-identification capability make the spectrometer PRISMA an ideal tool for spectroscopic studies in the little-explored region of neutron-rich nuclei which can be populated with multi-nucleon and deep-inelastic reactions and we were heavily involved in the campaign of the CLARA detector array
and was instrumental in the choice of Legnaro as site of the
AGATA demonstrator. Presently, the spectrometer is in stand-alone.
PRISMA is funded by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN),
3rd commission (Experimental nuclear physics). The collaboration formerly includes people from LNL, the Universities of Padua and Turin and the relative INFN sections,
and is actively collaborating with groups from other countries (see collaborations).
