Isomer spectroscopy of neutron-rich 180<A<190 nuclei via fragmentation of ¹⁹⁸Pt.

Isomer spectroscopy of deformed neutron-rich nuclei far from stability in the 180<A<190 region were performed at NSCL. Fragmentation products from a newly-developed ¹⁹⁸Pt primary beam were implanted in a Si detector stack for particle identification, with decay gamma rays detected in the surrounding GRETINA array. The multi-fold goals of the experiment include nuclear structure (long-predicted K-isomers in neutron-rich Hf nuclei), nuclear astrophysics (decay spectroscopy of nuclei in the r-process pathway relevant for heavy-element nucleosynthesis), isotope discovery (very neutron-rich nuclei), and reaction mechanisms (isomeric yields in fragmentation reactions). Half-life measurements and decay spectroscopy of multi-quasiparticle isomers in neutron-rich Hf, Ta and W nuclei will be presented and discussed.