Using spin alignment of inelastically excited nuclei in fast beams to assign spins: The spectroscopy of O 13 as a test case

Excited states in O13 were investigated using inelastic scattering of an E/A=69.5 MeV O13 beam off of a Be9 target. The excited states were identified in the invariant-mass spectra of the decay products. Both single-proton and sequential two-proton decays of the excited states were examined. For a number of the excited states, the protons were emitted with strong anisotropy where emissions transverse to the beam axis are favored. The measured proton-decay angular distributions were compared to predictions from distorted-wave Born-approximation calculations of the spin alignment which was shown to be largely independent of the excitation mechanism. The deduced O13 level scheme is compared to ab initio no-core shell model with continuum predictions. The lowest-energy excited states decay isotropically consistent with predictions of strong proton 1s1/2 structure. Above these states in the level scheme, we observed a number of higher-spin states not predicted within the model. Possibly these are associated with rotational bands built on deformed cluster configurations predicted by antisymmetrized molecular dynamics calculations. The spin alignment mechanism is shown to be useful for making spin assignments and may have widespread use.