Design and construction of charged-particle telescope array for study of exotic nuclear clustering structure

Abstract

The exploration of exotic shapes and properties of atomic nuclei, e.g., \(\alpha\) cluster and toroidal shape, is a fascinating field in nuclear physics. To study the decay of these nuclei, a novel detector aimed at detecting multiple \(\alpha\)-particle events was designed and constructed. The detector comprises two layers of double-sided silicon strip detectors (DSSD) and a cesium iodide scintillator array coupled with silicon photomultipliers array as light sensors, which has the advantages of their small size, fast response, and large dynamic range. DSSDs coupled with cesium iodide crystal arrays are used to distinguish multiple \(\alpha\) hits. The detector array has a compact and integrated design that can be adapted to different experimental conditions. The detector array was simulated using Geant4, and the excitation energy spectra of some \(\alpha\)-clustering nuclei were reconstructed to demonstrate the performance. The simulation results show that the detector array has excellent angular and energy resolutions, enabling effective reconstruction of the nuclear excited state by multiple \(\alpha\) particle events. This detector offers a new and powerful tool for nuclear physics experiments and has the potential to discover interesting physical phenomena related to exotic nuclear structures and their decay mechanisms.