High resolution study of the reactions 54, 56, 58Fe(16O, 12C)58, 60, 62Ni and a comparison with (6Li,d) α-transfer spectroscopy

Spectra and angular distributions for the reactions ^{54, 56, 58}Fe(¹⁶O, ¹²C)^{58, 60, 62}Ni (E_x = 0.0–4.5 MeV) have been measured at 50 MeV with an energy resolution of 45–80 keV using a Q3D spectrograph. The selectivity of the (¹⁶O, ¹²C) reaction is found to be very similar to the (⁶Li, d) reaction. The close correspondence recently noted between the (⁶Li, d) spectra and levels strongly excited in (t, p) and (³He, n) two-nucleon transfer reactions is also observed to be present for the (¹⁶O, ¹²C) reaction. Relative α spectroscopic factors for (¹⁶O, ¹²C) and (⁶Li, d) obtained in a DWBA analysis assuming direct one-step α-cluster transfer are in very good quantitative agreement. Unnatural parity states, whose excitation is forbidden in the DWBA α-cluster approximation, are observed to be very weakly populated. These results, together with previous work on s-d shell and Ni targets, strongly suggest that the spectroscopic information provided by the (¹⁶O, ¹²C) and (⁶Li, d) reactions is essentially the same and that this information may be reliably extracted by DWBA analysis.