Baloyi, Lerato Pertunia Lyna2019-08-292019-08-292019https://hdl.handle.net/10539/27926A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. 2019The 20Ne nucleus was investigated experimentally with a proton beam energy of Ep = 80 MeV at zero-degrees scattering angle using the 22Ne(p,t)20Ne reaction. The aim of the project was to investigate if the existence of a state at Ex = 22.5 MeV in 20Ne, previously using the same reaction at Ep = 60 MeV, can be confirmed. Measurements were performed using the K600 magnetic spectrometer of iThemba LABS and a newly developed gas handling system that ensured constant pressure throughout the experiment for the 22Ne gas target. In general, a good correspondence between the 20Ne excitation energy spectrum measured in the present experiment and that at Ep = 60 MeV was found in the region below 22.5 MeV. Several strongly populated states in 20Ne identified for the previous experiment at Ep = 60 MeV were again seen in the present experiment at Ep = 80 MeV, for which cross-sections were extracted. However, with the help of wavelet-based semblance analysis a tentative candidate 5-alpha cluster state at Ex = 22.5 MeV, which lies 3.33 MeV above the 20Ne 5-alpha break-up threshold, was established (at Ex = 22.4 MeV in this study) to be only weakly populated in comparison to the Ep = 60 MeV dataset. The present finding supports the existence of a state at Ex = 22.4 MeV but further experimental work is required to investigate its natureenThesis