Search for highly excited states in light nuclei with three-body reactions

Various three-body break-up reactions resulting from the bombardment of ⁷Li with 120 MeV ³He have been measured simultaneously in a kinematically complete experiment. Missing-mass spectra have been deduced for ⁴H, ⁴He, ⁴Li, ⁵He, ⁵Li, ⁶He, ⁶Li and ⁷Li. The ground states of ⁴H and ⁵He are well described as n-t and n-α P-wave final-state interactions, respectively. Evidence is found for relatively narrow states at very high excitation energies in several nuclei. The results are compared with those of other authors and with various theoretical predictions.