Study of the reaction 16O(7Li, 3He)20F

Angular distributions for the ¹⁶O(⁷Li,³He)²⁰F reaction, at a bombarding energy of 24 MeV, have been measured for all states below 6.25 MeV excitation, using a gas target and a multi-angle spectrograph. Low-lying core-excited states are populated much less strongly than known (sd)⁴ states. Cross sections decrease rapidly with excitation energy, but states at 4.20, 4.52, 4.58 and 5.41 MeV are quite strong — suggesting they have high spin and (sd)⁴ configurations. Previously suggested high-spin states at 4.73 and 4.76 MeV are weak, implying they are probably of core-excited character.