Plunger lifetime measurements after Coulomb excitation at intermediate beam energies

Absolute transition probabilities of the first 2(+) state in Pd-110,Pd-114 were remeasured using the recoil distance Doppler shift technique following projectile Coulomb excitation at intermediate beam energies for the first time. The Pd-110 experiment served to check the novel technique as well as the method used for the data analysis which is based on the examination of gamma-ray lineshapes. Whereas the measured B(E2) value for Pd-110 agrees very well with the literature, the value obtained for Pd-114 differs considerably. The data is also used to test a novel concept, called the valence proton symmetry, which allows one to extrapolate nuclear properties to very neutron rich nuclei.