First Observation Of Doubly-Magic Ni-48

The doubly magic nucleus Ni-48 has been observed for the first time at GANIL. The experiment was performed using a high intensity Ni-58 beam at 74.5 McV/A on a nickel target. This T-Z = -4 nucleus is the most proton-rich nucleus ever observed, and is a good candidate for two-proton radioactivity. In this experiment, we also implanted around 280 Cr-42, 50 Fe-45 and 100 Ni-49 isotopes, for which no experimental information about the decay is available.