Laser spectroscopy on‐line with nuclear accelerators

During the last few years the study of highly unstable nuclei has made dramatic advances as a result of breakthroughs in experimental technique. As Olav Redi has discussed in the previous article, on page 26, electrons interact with the nucleus so that one can use atomic spectra to probe nuclear structures. The recent experimental developments have both the production of intense and pure beams of mass‐separated isotopes, on the one hand, and sensitive and sophisticated techniques for the observation of these nuclei on the other. The basic difficulties in the experiments arise from the very small number of the unstable nuclei that are available even with modern on‐line mass separators and from the short lifetimes of the nuclei.