EURORIB'15

Delayed charged particle spectroscopy following the β decay of nuclei at, or near, the proton drip line provides an excellent technique for studying the evolution of nuclear structure and testing isospin symmetry in weakly bound nuclei. The β decays of 22,23Si are particularly attractive cases since these are the lightest (bound) nuclei with ground-state isospin projections of Tz=-3 and Tz=-5/2, respectively. Based on their large decay Q-values, a number of exotic charged-particle decay channels are potentially open including β-delayed proton (βp), β2p, and β3p. To date, very limited spectroscopic information is available for the decays of these exotic nuclei. In this work, a novel arrangement of three double-sided Si strip detectors (DSSD) surrounded by 16 high-purity Ge detectors of the Segmented Germanium Array (SeGA) was employed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL, USA) to characterize the β-delayed charged-particle decays of 22Si, and 23Si. Coincidences between the emitted charged particles detected in the DSSD and the γ rays detected in SeGA have revealed several previously unknown excited states in the daughter nuclei 22Al and 23Al, respectively. Evidence for previously unobserved decay pathways have also been deduced including several weak β-delayed proton branches and even the existence of β-delayed two proton emission from 22Si. In this presentation, I will present the detailed level schemes that have been deduced for the decays of 22Si and 23Si and discuss how this measurement will be used to provide one of the first experimental determinations of the ground-state masses of these nuclei.