The Advanced GAmma Tracking Array (AGATA) is a European project to develop and operate the next generation γ-ray spectrometer. AGATA is based on the technique of γ-ray energy tracking in electrically segmented high-purity germanium crystals. This technique requires the accurate determination of the energy, time and position of every interaction as a γ ray deposits its energy within the detector volume. Reconstruction of the full interaction path results in a detector with very high efficiency and excellent spectral response. The realisation of γ-ray tracking and AGATA is a result of many technical advances. These include the development of encapsulated highly segmented germanium detectors assembled in a triple cluster detector cryostat, an electronics system with fast digital sampling and a data acquisition system to process the data at a high rate. The full characterisation of the crystals was measured and compared with detector-response simulations. This enabled pulse-shape analysis algorithms, to extract energy, time and position, to be employed. In addition, tracking algorithms for event reconstruction were developed. The first phase of AGATA is now complete and operational in its first physics campaign. In the future AGATA will be moved between laboratories in Europe and operated in a series of campaigns to take advantage of the different beams and facilities available to maximise its science output. The paper reviews all the achievements made in the AGATA project including all the necessary infrastructure to operate and support the spectrometer

Shape coexistence in the light krypton isotopes was studied in two low-energy Coulomb excitation experiments using radioactive 74 Kr and 76 Kr beams from the SPIRAL facility at GANIL. The ground-state bands in both isotopes were populated up to the 8 + state via multi-step Coulomb excitation, and several non-yrast states were observed. Large sets of matrix elements were extracted for both nuclei from the observed γ -ray yields. Diagonal matrix elements were determined by utilizing the reorientation effect. In both isotopes the spectroscopic quadrupole moments for the ground-state bands and the bands based on excited 0 + 2 states are found to have opposite signs. The experimental data are interpreted within a phenomenological two-band mixing model and model-independent quadrupole invariants are deduced for the relevant 0 + states using the complete sets of matrix elements and the formalism of quadrupole sum rules. Configuration mixing calculations based on triaxial Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculations with the Gogny D1S effective interaction have been performed and are compared both with the experimental results and with recent calculations using the Skyrme SLy6 effective interaction and the full generator-coordinate method restricted to axial shapes.

A long-standing prediction of nuclear models is the emergence of a region of long-lived, or even stable, superheavy elements beyond the actinides. These nuclei owe their enhanced stability to closed shells in the structure of both protons and neutrons. However, theoretical approaches to date do not yield consistent predictions of the precise limits of the 'island of stability'; experimental studies are therefore crucial. The bulk of experimental effort so far has been focused on the direct creation of superheavy elements in heavy ion fusion reactions, leading to the production of elements up to proton number Z = 118 (refs 4, 5). Recently, it has become possible to make detailed spectroscopic studies of nuclei beyond fermium (Z = 100), with the aim of understanding the underlying single-particle structure of superheavy elements. Here we report such a study of the nobelium isotope 254No, with 102 protons and 152 neutrons--the heaviest nucleus studied in this manner to date. We find three excited structures, two of which are isomeric (metastable). One of these structures is firmly assigned to a two-proton excitation. These states are highly significant as their location is sensitive to single-particle levels above the gap in shell energies predicted at Z = 114, and thus provide a microscopic benchmark for nuclear models of the superheavy elements.