Nuclear reaction studies and prospects for the new mara-leb facility

A Low Energy Branch for the MARA separator, MARA-LEB, is under construction at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. It will be used to purify and study exotic beams initially via nuclear decay and laser spec-troscopy. Two experiments have been performed using the MARA separa-tor to determine the acceptance of the gas cell and to assess the feasibility of future experiments at the new facility. Products of different reaction mech-anisms have been produced and their transmission from the focal plane of MARA into the LEB gas cell has been estimated. In one experiment, medium-mass nuclei have been produced in fusion-evaporation reactions. In a second experiment, with the primary goal of studying the non-fusion reaction dynamics, heavy target-like fragments from multi-nucleon transfer reactions have been produced. Production cross sections have been mea-sured and are presented in this work.