Single and Double Protons from the $^{14}$O+$\alpha $ Interaction

The proton production in the $^{14}$O+$\alpha $ interaction is important because it determines the onset of the high-temperature rp-process. The 2p decay is of current interest in relation with a possibility of a correlated 2p-pair decay from the excited states in $^{20}$Ne. There are evident experimental difficulties to obtain reliable information on each of the processes in question. To solve these problems we produced an $^{14}$O beam at the K500 Cyclotron at Texas A{\&}M University using MARS. A system of double photmultiplyers looking at thin plastic scintillators provided for information on the intensity of the $^{14}$O beam, beam contaminations, and a ``start'' signal for the proton identification by the time of flight method. The $^{4}$He($^{14}$O,p) and $^{4}$He($^{14}$O,2p) reactions were studied using the Thick Target Inverse Kinematics method. TOF between Si detectors and the PM system provided for the overall time resolution ($\sim $1ns), which was enough for reliable identification of single protons from $\alpha $ particles as well as for the identification for proton decay from the highly excited states in $^{17}$F. The double proton events were detected as coincidence events in a system of 16 Si detectors. Over 4000 double proton events were accumulated which showed strong correlation between energies of the protons.