Evidence for octupole vibration in the superdeformed well of {sup 190}Hg from eurogam

Abstract

Gammasphere experiments in 1993-94 brought to light the existence of an excited superdeformed (SD) band in {sup 190}Hg with the unusual property of decaying entirely to the lowest (yrast) SD band over 3-4 transitions, rather than to the normally deformed states as is usually the case in the A {approximately} 150 and A {approximately} 190 regions of superdeformation. Although M1 transitions between signature-partner SD bands were previously observed in {sup 193}Hg, no such mechanism was available to explain the situation in the even-even nucleus {sup 190}Hg, whose yrast SD band has no signature partner. The best explanation appears to lie in long-standing theoretical predictions that the SD minimum in the potential energy surface would be quite soft with respect to octupole vibrations. This would lead to enhanced E1 transitions connecting the one-phonon and zero-phonon states. The data and this interpretation were published. A shortcoming of the Gammasphere experiments was that they did not allow the definitive measurement of the energies of the gamma-ray transitions connecting the two bands, due to the very weak population of the excited band ({approximately}0.05% of the {sup 190}Hg channel) and also partly, we believed, to the angular distributions of the transitions, which were peaked nearmore » 90 degrees, where Gammasphere had few detectors.« less