Empirical evidence suggests that neutron pairing plays an important role for the stability of nuclei near the neutron drip line. It is shown that the low binding of these nuclei will lead to a neutronization of the nuclear surface and possibly to large cross-sections for Coulomb dissociation, which then offers a new way to study clusters and their binding energies.

▪ Abstract  The identification of direct-reaction processes and their subsequent exploitation for the spectroscopy of weak radioactive beams of exotic nuclei are important problems in modern nuclear physics. One- and two-nucleon knockout reactions, studied using intermediate-energy radioactive beams, have been shown to be powerful tools for this purpose. This article discusses the current status of such investigations and reviews what has been learned to date from the experiments and analyses of the past five years. The techniques are still in their formative stages, and the open questions and challenges are outlined.

After giving a brief historical overview, we use simple few-body models to illustrate the: basic properties of halo states. Giant halos may exist in certain

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