Population And Decay Of Superdeformed States Of Atomic Nuclei In The Lead Region

This paper reviews the most recent advances in the understanding of the physics of superdeformed nuclei from the point of view of the experimentalists. It covers among other subjects the following topics: (1) the discovery of a new region of superdeformed nuclei near A=190, (2) the surprising result of the occurrence of bands with identical transition energies in neighboring superdeformed nuclei near A=150 and A=190, (3) the importance of octupole degrees of freedom at large deformation and (4) the properties associated with the feeding and the decay of superdeformed bands. The text presented hereafter will appear as a contribution to the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, Volume 41. 88 refs., 11 figs.

Studies on nuclei near Z=82 contributed to the establishment of a new region of nuclear deformation and a new class of nuclear structure at closed shells. A important aspect of this work is the establishment of the connection between low-lying 0[sup +] states in even[endash]even nuclei and the occurrence of shape coexistence in the odd-mass neighbors (E0 transitions in [sup 185]Pt, shape coexistence in [sup 184]Pt and [sup 187]Au). A new type of picosecond lifetime measurement system capable of measuring the lifetime of states that decay only by internal conversion was developed and applied to the [sup 186,188]Tl decay to determine the lifetime of the 0[sub 2][sup +] and 2[sub 2][sup +] deformed states in [sup 186,188]Hg. A search for the population of superdeformed states in [sup 192]Hg by the radioactive decay of [sup 192]Tl was accomplished by using a prototype internal pair formation spectrometer.