TIARA: A large solid angle silicon array for direct reaction studies with radioactive beams

A compact, quasi-4π4π position sensitive silicon array, TIARA, designed to study direct reactions induced by radioactive beams in inverse kinematics is described here. The Transfer and Inelastic All-angle Reaction Array (TIARA) consists of 8 resistive charge division detectors forming an octagonal barrel around the target and a set of double-sided silicon-strip annular detectors positioned at each end of the barrel. The detector was coupled to the γ-rayγ-ray array EXOGAM and the spectrometer VAMOS at the GANIL Laboratory to demonstrate the potential of such an apparatus with radioactive beams. The N(d,p)14N15 reaction, well known in direct kinematics, has been carried out in inverse kinematics for that purpose. The observation of the N15 ground state and excited states at 7.16 and 7.86 MeV is presented here as well as the comparison of the measured proton angular distributions with DWBA calculations. Transferred l-values are in very good agreement with both theoretical calculations and previous experimental results obtained in direct kinematics.