Nuclear response to two-neutron transfer via the (¹⁸O,¹⁶O) reaction, M. Cavallaro, INFN - LNS, Italy − A study of the structure of different nuclei was pursued at the Catania INFN-LNS laboratory by the (¹⁸O,¹⁶O) two-neutron transfer reaction at 84 MeV incident energy.  The experiments were performed using several solid targets from light (⁹Be, ¹¹B, ^12,13C, ¹⁶O, ²⁸Si) to heavier ones (^58,64Ni, ¹²⁰Sn, ²⁰⁸Pb). The ¹⁶O ejectiles were detected at forward angles by the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. Thanks to an innovative technique the ejectiles were identified without the need of time of flight measurements. Exploiting the large momentum acceptance (20%) and solid angle (50 msr) of the spectrometer, energy spectra were obtained with a relevant yield up to about 20 MeV excitation energy.  The application of the powerful trajectory reconstruction technique did allow to get energy spectra with energy resolution of about 100 keV and angular distributions with angular resolution better than 0.3°.  In the energy spectra several known low lying and resonant states of the product nuclei have been observed.  A common feature observed with light nuclei is the appearance of unknown resonant structures at for example 10.5 and 13.6 MeV in ¹⁵C and 16 MeV in ¹⁴C.  The strong population of these latter together with the measured width can reveal the excitation of a collective mode connected with the transfer of a pair.  Considerations based on kinematical matching conditions and on the shell configuration of the explored nuclei explain why such a mode is so excited in such reactions.  In addition the measured angular distributions seems to indicate a transfer of a correlated neutron pair in L = 0 configuration, compatible with the Giant Pairing Vibration mode.  Theoretical calculations have been performed in order to estimate the contribution of the break-up both of two correlated neutrons and of two independent ones.