Decay of a narrow and high spin 24Mg + 24Mg resonance

The 24Mg + 24Mg reaction has been studied at the Legnaro Tandem at a CM bombarding energy of 45.7 MeV where a narrow and high spin resonance has been reported previously. The decay of the resonance into the inelastic and fusion–evaporation channels has been investigated. The ON and OFF resonance decay yields have been measured using, for the inelastic channels, the fragment spectrometer PRISMA and the γ array CLARA, and, for the fusion–evaporation channels, the Si array EUCLIDES and the γ array GASP. Strong resonant effects have been observed in the inelastic channels involving the and states of the 24Mg ground state band. Weaker effects are also seen in certain fusion–evaporation channels. The properties of the studied resonance are in agreement with molecular model predictions. It is also proposed that the narrow and high spin 24Mg + 24Mg resonance corresponds to the formation of a fast rotating and highly prolate deformed 48Cr after a Jacobi shape transition and just before fission.