| The way in which an atomic nucleus responds to excitations, whether by promoting individual nucleons into higher shells or by collective
rotation or vibration, reveals many details of the underlying nuclear structure. The response of the nucleus is also closely related to its macroscopic shape. Low-energy Coulomb excitation provides a well-understood means of exciting atomic nuclei, allowing the measurement of static and dynamic electromagnetic moments as a probe
of the nuclear wave functions. Due to the availability of radioactive heavy-ion beams with energies near the Coulomb barrier it is now
possible to study the shape and collectivity of short-lived exotic nuclei, providing a particularly stringent test of modern theoretical nuclear structure models. This review gives an
introduction to the experimental techniques related to low-energy Coulomb excitation with radioactive ion beams and summarizes the results that were obtained over the last ten years for exotic nuclei across the entire nuclear chart at various laboratories employing the isotope separation on-line technique. |
