Experimental Evidence of<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mi>He</mml:mi><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math>Decay from<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mi>Ne</mml:mi><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/><mml:mn>18</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math>Excited States

Two-proton decay from (18)Ne excited states has been studied by complete kinematical reconstruction of the decay products. The (18)Ne nucleus has been produced as a radioactive beam by (20)Ne primary projectile fragmentation at 45 AMeV incident energy on a Be target. The (18)Ne at 33 AMeV incident energy has been excited via Coulomb excitation on a (nat)Pb target. The obtained results unambiguously show that the 6.15 MeV (18)Ne state two-proton decay proceeds through a (2)He diproton resonance (31%) and democratic or virtual sequential decay (69%). The quoted branching ratio has been deduced from relative angle and momentum correlations of the emitted proton pairs.