Isomeric Decay of Thallium at the ISOLDE Decay Station

At ISOLDE, proton beams from the Proton Synchrotron Booster are used to induce fission in an Uranium target. These fission fragments are then extracted, mass separated and sent to the ISOLDE Decay Station to study their decay. One such decay is that of nuclear isomers, excited states with a relatively long lifetime. The nuclear isomer of Thallium has a different shape than the ground state, a fascinating phenomenon only known to the atomic nucleus called shape coexistence. This project intends to measure the lifetime of the non-isomeric intermediate state of Thallium to allow us to make inferences about the shape of Thallium in the ground state and the isomeric state.