Characterisation of the SpecMAT active target for the α(⁸⁶Kr, ³He)⁸⁷Kr transfer reaction

The SpecMAT active target was designed to study nuclei via direct reactions using very weak radioactive ion beams. Such studies will provide insights on the single-particle structure of states in key nuclei, helping the understanding of the changes in nuclear structure away from stability. The detector will be used in CERN inside the ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer to exploit the secondary beams of the ISOLDE facility. The detector has been assembled at KU Leuven,where the first off-line tests had already been performed with an argon gas mixture. This thesis describes the performance of the SpecMAT active target with a helium gas mixture and a Monte-Carlo simulation of the α(⁸⁶Kr, ³He)⁸⁷Kr transfer reaction that estimates the feasibility of its measurement with SpecMAT.