In this talk, I will present the work done during my PhD and my postdoc on the study of heavy nuclei through low energy experiments. A focus will be done on the study of the region of octupole deformation in the actinides through decay spectroscopy at IGISOL. This study is of particular interest since several theoretical calculations predict strong octupole deformations in this region of the nuclear chart. However experimental data are scarce due to very low production rates. I will present how alpha decay spectroscopy can be used to sign the presence of such deformation through the case of the decay from 225Pa to 221Ac.
In a second time, I will present the development of the SEASON detector for S3-LEB and of the double penning trap PIPERADE for DESIR and give ideas of what could be done in the region at S3-LEB and DESIR.
