Coulomb excitation of neutron-rich $^{44}$Ar at SPIRAL
Résumé
The weakening of the N = 28 shell closure and the development of deformation and shape coexistence were addressed in a low-energy Coulomb excitation experiment using a radioactive 44Ar beam from SPIRAL. The 2+ 1 and one higher-lying state in 44Ar were excited on 208Pb and 109Ag targets at two different beam energies. From the collected data it will be possible to extract the B(E2) values between all observed states and to determine the quadrupole moment of the first 2+ state, providing information on the prolate or oblate character of the deformation.