Lifetimes in 61Ni measured by the recoil distance technique

Low-lying states in 61Ni were populated using the 58Fe( alpha ,n gamma )61Ni reaction at a beam energy of 9.0 MeV. Measurements were made using the recoil distance method to determine the mean lifetimes of the 283 (35+or-5 ps), 656 (25+or-6 ps) and 1015 (9+or-2 ps) keV levels. The results are compared with previous measurements and their relevance to the shell-model calculations is discussed.