Abstract
There is sparse direct experimental evidence that atomic nuclei can exhibit stable “pear” shapes arising from strong octupole correlations. In order to investigate the nature of octupole collectivity in radium isotopes, electric octupole () matrix elements have been determined for transitions in nuclei using the method of sub-barrier, multistep Coulomb excitation. Beams of the radioactive radium isotopes were provided by the HIE-ISOLDE facility at CERN. The observed pattern of matrix elements for different nuclear transitions is explained by describing as pear shaped with stable octupole deformation, while behaves like an octupole vibrator.
- Received 15 November 2019
- Corrected 19 May 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.042503
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
19 May 2020
Correction: A proof change request to replace two panels in Figure 1 was not implemented properly and has now been remedied.