Probing nuclear molecular analogue states in carbon, boron and beryllium isotopes

enough for definitive statements to be made about the underlying cluster structure of this nucleus. However, some limited evidence for decays to the sup 1 sup 2 Be+alpha final state was obtained. In recent years the possibility of molecular-type binding on the nuclear scale has been raised and models based on this hypothesis have met with considerable success in describing the general energy-spin systematics of the beryllium isotopes. This thesis details the planning, implementation and analysis of two experiments to investigate such structures in the nuclei sup 1 sup 0 Be, sup 1 sup 0 B, sup 1 sup 0 C and sup 1 sup 6 C. The A=10 study was performed at the Australian National University and utilised a sup 1 sup 2 C beam incident on sup 1 sup 2 C and sup 7 Li targets. For the sup 1 sup 0 B decay channel useful data was extracted which provides evidence for two previously unobserved states in this nucleus which decay strongly into the sup 6 Li(3 sup + , 2.186 MeV)+alpha channel. It is possible that the type of nuclear structure associated with these levels is similar to the molecular configurations that have been suggested for sup 1 sup 0 Be. The second investigation employed a radioactive sup 1 sup 6 C beam which was produced at the GANIL fragmentation facility. After inelastic excitation from a sup 1 sup 2 C target the decay of high-lying sup 1 sup 6 C levels into sup 1 sup 0 Be+ sup 6 He, sup 1 sup 2 Be+alpha, sup 8 He+2 alpha and sup 6 He+ sup 6 He+alpha, was measured. The results indicate that, contrary to expectations, this excitation mechanism only weakly populates the sup 1 sup 6 C states so that the statistics gathered during the measurement were not hig