Experimental investigations of the nuclear level density by using heavy ion reactions

The transition of the level density parameter a _off from the low excitation energy value a _off=A/8 MeV⁻¹ to the Fermi gas value a _FG ∼ A/15 MeV⁻¹ was discovered a few years ago studying particle spectra evaporated from hot compound systems of A∼ 160. A number of experiments have been recently performed to confirm the earlier findings and extend the investigation to other mass regions and to higher excitation energies. Furthermore, precision coincidence experiments have been done in the lead region in which evaporation residues are tagged by low energy gammarays. Those experiments open the possibility of a detailed study of the level densities in nuclei where the shell effects are important.     

Suppression of near-Fermi level electronic states at the interface in a LaNiO3/SrTiO3 superlattice

Standing-wave-excited photoemission is used to study a SrTiO3/LaNiO3 superlattice. Rocking curves of core-level and valence band spectra are used to derive layer-resolved spectral functions, revealing a suppression of electronic states near the Fermi level in the multilayer as compared to bulk LaNiO3. Further analysis shows that the suppression of these states is not homogeneously distributed over the LaNiO3 layers but is more pronounced near the interfaces. Possible origins of this effect and its relationship to a previously observed metal-insulator-transition in ultrathin LaNiO3 films are discussed.     

Resolving magnetic and chemical correlations in CoPtCr films using soft X-ray resonant scattering

Resonant small-angle scattering at the 2p levels of 3d transition elements strongly enhances scattering from both magnetic and chemical structure in the plane of thin films, as recently demonstrated for Co/Pt multilayers having perpendicular anisotropy. Here this resonant enhancement is demonstrated for CoPtCr films having in-plane magnetic anisotropy. A simple formalism describing the spectral dependence of the kinematical scattering provides a means to distinguish between magnetic and charge scattering and to probe the chemical segregation processes yielding charge scattering, thereby providing new information about this structure. It is found that correlation lengths of magnetic scattering are roughly 5 times larger than those for chemical scattering in the as-deposited CoPtCr film studied, consistent with significant exchange-coupling between polycrystalline grains.