Light ion transfer reactions with the HELIOS spectrometer

Light-ion induced transfer and inelastic scattering reactions on stable or long-lived targets have been used extensively to study the structure of nuclei near the line of β-stability, and much of the detailed information on the single-particle structure of nuclei has been derived from such studies. Recently, however, a substantial expansion of the range of isotopes, for which this nuclear structure information can be obtained, has presented itself by using radioactive beams in inverse kinematics reactions. Such beams are now available at a number of facilities around the world, including the in-flight production method and CARIBU facility at ATLAS. The HELIOS spectrometer, which has been used since August 2008 at ATLAS, circumvents many of the problems associated with inverse kinematics. In this talk I will discuss the principle of the spectrometer as well as some of main physics results that have been obtained to date in nuclei ranging from $13B$ to $137Xe$ using both stable and radioactive beams.