Establishing the Maximum Collectivity in Highly Deformed <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mi>Z</mml:mi></mml:math> Nuclei
Ryan David Owen Llewellyn, M. A. Bentley, R. Wadsworth, H. Iwasaki, J. Dobaczewski, G. de Angelis, J. Ash, D. Bazin, P. C. Bender, B. Cederwall, B. P. Crider, M. Doncel, Robert Elder, B. Elman, A. Gade, M. Grinder, T. Haylett, D. G. Jenkins, I. Y. Lee, B. Longfellow, E. Lunderberg, T. Mijatović, S. A. Milne, D. Muir, Alessandro Pastore, D. Rhodes, D. Weißhaar
Abstract
The lifetimes of the first excited 2^{+} states in the N=Z nuclei ^{80}Zr, ^{78}Y, and ^{76}Sr have been measured using the γ-ray line shape method following population via nucleon-knockout reactions from intermediate-energy rare-isotope beams. The extracted reduced electromagnetic transition strengths yield new information on where the collectivity is maximized and provide evidence for a significant, and as yet unexplained, odd-odd vs even-even staggering in the observed values. The experimental results are analyzed in the context of state-of-the-art nuclear density-functional model calculations.