Coulomb excitation of states in 232Th

Abstract

Twenty-five states in 232Th have been observed with 18 MeV 4He ions on a thick target. Eleven 2 + states between 774 and 1554 keV and three 3 − states are populated by direct E2 and E3, respectively. The remaining states are either weakly excited by multiple Coulomb excitation and/or populated by the decay of the directly excited states. Spin assignments are based on γ-ray angular distributions. Reduced transition probabilities have been deduced from the γ-ray yields. The B(E2) values for excitation of the 2 + states range from 0.024 to 3.5 W.u. (222 W.u. for the first 2 + state). For the 3 − states, the B(E3,0 → 3 −) values are 1.7, 11, and 24 W.u. A possible two-phonon state at 1554 keV, which is nearly harmonic, decays to four members of the one-phonon states, to the ground-state band, and to the K = 0 − octupole band. The B(E2) value for excitation of this state is 0.66 ± 0.05 W.u. and the B(E1) values for decay of this state are (2 and 6)×10 −4 W.u. The B(E2) values between two- and one-phonon vibrational states range between 16 and 53 W.u. which are an order of magnitude larger than the B(E2) values between the one- and zero-phonon states. This disagrees with our present understanding of collectivity in nuclei if this 2 + state is considered to be a collective two-phonon excitation. The 2 + states at 1477 and 1387 keV, which are also nearly harmonic, are possible candidates with two-phonon structure. The agreement between the experimental results and the microscopic calculations by Neergård and Vogel of the B(E3,0 → 3) for the 3 − members of the one-phonon octupole quadruplet is satisfactory when the Coriolis coupling between the states with K and K ± 1 is included. The B(E1) branching ratios for transitions from the 3 − and 1 − states to the ground-state band have large deviations from the Alaga-rule predictions. These deviations can be understood by the strong Coriolis coupling between the states of the octupole quadruplet in deformed nuclei.