Strong Resonances at High Excitation Energy in ^17 O + Alpha Resonance Scattering

The thick target inverse kinematics (TTIK) approach was used to measure excitation functions for the elastic ^17 O ( α,α ) scattering at the initial ^17 O beam energy of 54.4 MeV. We observed strong peaks corresponding to highly excited α -cluster states in the ^21 Ne excitation energy region of 8–16 MeV, which have never been investigated before. Additional tests were done at a ^17 O beam energy of 56.4 MeV to estimate a possible contribution of resonance inelastic scattering.