Beta-delayed two-proton emission at ISOLDE

Abstract

The process of β-delayed two-proton emission has attracted much interest over the past two decades, since it was hoped that the study of this process would provide information on correlations inside nuclei. At ISOLDE Ar-31 has been extensively studied in three experiments during the past decade. We review these studies by comparing the new physics results that have emerged from the different experiments and by highlighting the technical development leading to these results. The β-delayed two-proton emission is, in most cases, simply an extension of β-delayed single proton emission to high lying states that are unstable to proton emission, thus no sign of correlations has been seen.