New nuclide, $^{14}$F

Long ago the instability of $^{14}$F was estimated to be $\sim$2.58 MeV. Recently, properties of $^{14}$F and other 2s-d shell nuclei were calculated in the framework of an ab-initio approach. However, no experimental data are available on $^{14}$F. We used the Thick Target Inverse Kinematics method (TTIK) to study the excitation function for the $^{13}$O+p elastic scattering where $^{14}$F is the compound nucleus. The $^{13}$O (T$_{1/2}$ = 8.6 ms) secondary beam was made with intensity 5x10$^{3}$ pps via the $^{1}$H($^{14}$N,2n) reaction with a $^{14}$N primary beam at 38 MeV/u from the Texas A\&M Univ. cyclotron. To apply the TTIK method, we degraded the $^{13}$O energy to 11 MeV/u. As a result of the study, we obtain data on the ground and several excited states in $^{14}$F, their excitation energies, quantum characteristics and the widths of the resonances. The mass excess of $^{14}$F (M-E) was found to be 31960$\pm$50 keV. $^{14}$F appeared to be more stable than the corresponding estimations based on different extrapolations. Probably the unexpected lower instability is a result of rather pure single particle structure of the ground state in $^{14}$F.