Decay-out from SD states initiated by the onset of chaos

Abstract

It is shown that the decay out from superdeformed bands is enhanced by several orders of magnitude due to the onset of chaos in normal deformed states. The onset of chaos is caused by the residual two-body interaction, that plays a crucial role for the normal deformed states at excitation energies where the decay out occurs (3–5 MeV). At these excitation energies the distribution of nearest neighbor energies is of GOE type, while long-range spectrum correlations ( Δ 3-statistics) may deviate from GOE for large energy distances. It is suggested that measurements of the distribution of decay-out matrix elements may reveal the degree of quantum chaos.