Coulomb excitation of neutron-rich beams at REX-ISOLDE

After the successful commissioning of the radioactive beam experiment at ISOLDE (REX-ISOLDE) --an accelerator for exotic nuclei produced by ISOLDE-- in 2002 and the promotion to a CERN user facility in 2003, first physics experiments using these beams were performed. Initial experiments focused on the region of deformation in the vicinity of the neutron-rich Na and Mg isotopes. Preliminary results on the neutron-rich Na and Mg isotopes show the high potential and physics opportunities offered by the exotic isotope accelerator REX in conjunction with the modern Germanium γ spectrometer MINIBALL.