Fermi superallowed beta+- decays in heavy odd-odd, N = Z nuclei.

The beta+-decay half-lives of the neutron-deficient, odd-odd, N = Z nuclei, 74Rb, 78Y, 82NB and 86Tc were measured following the fragmentation of a primary 92Mo beam at an energy of 60 MeV per nucleon at the GANIL laboratory, France. They were measured by correlating beta+-decays with the implantation of unambiguously identified fragments. The deduced log10 ft1/2-values are consistent with 0+→ 0+, Fermi superallowed transitions, which together with the measured beta+-detection efficiencies suggest T = 1, 1pi- 0+ ground states for these odd-odd, N = Z nuclei. These data represent the heaviest N = Z systems for which Fermi superallowed decays have been established. The results suggest that these nuclei can be used to extend the mass range used to test the Conserved Vector Current hypothesis of the standard model. In addition, an experiment using the reaction 58Ni + 28Si at a beam energy of 200 MeV was performed at the Laboratorio Nationale di Legnaro, Italy, using the EUROBALL spectrometer together with a charged particle silicon detector ball and an array of liquid scintillator neutron detectors. The measured values of the energies of the evaporated, charged-particles and those of the gamma-ray multiplicity (deduced using the liquid scintillator detectors), are used to implement a novel technique for the channel selection of weakly populated evaporation channels