Studies of exotic light nuclei with nucleon transfer reactions

For decades, single nucleon transfer reactions such as (d, p) have served as fundamental tools for studying the properties of nuclei throughout the periodic table. Their selectivity and ease of interpretation have made them some of the most heavily used reactions for the determination of quantum numbers, and for probing the wave functions of single-particle states in nuclei. With the advent of radioactive beams, interest in these simple transfer reactions has been renewed. I will review the utility of such reactions, and discuss some current applications in the context of the modern theoretical understanding of nuclear structure and in nuclear astrophysics. Finally, I will discuss two recent examples of studies of the (d, p) reaction carried out with radioactive beams to study the light nuclei Li-9 and He-7, and present some of the challenges and opportunities that await in this new domain.