Probing the Nuclear Response with One- and Two-Nucleon Pick-Up Reactions

We investigate the origin of the broad structure present in the continuum region of the nuclear spectrum excited in (p, t) and (p, d) reactions leading to 118Sn. We find that the incoherent excitation of mainly pure configurations of the type 1 valence + 1 deep hole with different angular momenta dominates the observed structure, while the giant pairing resonance lies at higher excitation energy and only affects its upper tail.