Volume 244, number 2 PHYSICS LETTERS B 19 July 1990

Spin excitations in the deformed nuclei 1548m, 158Gd and 16gEr

D. Frekers, H.J. W/Srtche t, A. Richter 1, R. Abegg, R.E. A z u m a 2, A. Celler, C. C h a n 2,
T.E. D r a k e 2, R. H e l m e r , K.P. Jackson, J.D. K i n g 2 C.A. Miller, R. Schubank, M.C. Vetterli
a n d S. Yen
TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 2A3

Received 28 February 1990

An intermediate energy proton scattering experiment has been performed to probe spin excitation in the deformed rare earth
nuclei ~5*Sm, ~SSGdand 168Erfor energies up to 12 MeV. A concentration of spin M1 strength is observed between 6 and 10 MeV
with a total strength of about 11 /22Nindependent of the nucleus. The strength function shows two distinct structures separated by
about 2.5 MeV and each having a width of about 2 MeV.

1. In~oduefion vection currents for transitions in l S4Sm, 156Gd ' and

164Dy has been demonstrated by the weak excitation
thru intermediate energy proton scattering [ 12,13 ]
Since the discovery of a strong low-lying isovector
M1 transition in the heavy deformed nucleus 156Gd at low momentum transfer.
Experimental data for M1 transitions in the energy
by inelastic electron scattering [ 1 ], the M1 distribu-
region above 4 MeV are scarce and limited to elec-
tion in deformed nuclei has been a subject of exten-
tron scattering experiments o n 156Gd and laSEr
sive theoretical and experimental investigations. Be-
[ 14,15 ] and some intermediate energy proton scat-
low 4 MeV the excitation region has been particularly
tering as well as tagged photon experiments on laCe,
well studied. A large set of inelastic electron scatter-
ing data on 1~4Sm, 154'lS6'lS8Gd, t64Dy, 168Er and 174yb Sn isotopes, and lighter nuclei of A ~ 100 [ 16-19 ].
No M1 strength above an upper limit of B ( M 1 ) /
[ 1-4] is available, which has been expanded by nu-
A E ~ 7.5 .u2/MeV at around 7.5 MeV excitation was
clear resonance fluorescence measurements on
156"158'16Gd [ 5 , 6 ] , t6'162'164Dy [ 7 ] , and 15Nd [8]. observed via electron scattering [ 15 ]. However, in
the case of proton and polarized tagged photon scat-
The latter add to an early set o f measurements on
166'168'17Er [ 9 ] . The occurrence of low-lying M1
tering some spin strength between 6 and 10 MeV was
observed, and, in fact, even a double structure was
transitions in all of the deformed nuclei has been well
reported for 124Sn [ 16 ].
established.
The proton scattering experiment presented in this
Various theoretical interpretations for low-lying 1+-
paper was motivated by two facts:
states have been proposed, some of them leading to
(i) so far, noticeable spin strength below 4 MeV was
the picture of proton and neutron deformed fluids
only observed in one case, i64Dy [ 13 ], in qualitative
performing out of phase oscillations, thus giving rise
agreement with measurements described in ref. [ 4 ].
to convection currents rather than spin magnetiza-
This was explained by QRPA calculations which used
tion. (For a recent review of theoretical studies we
a self-consistent symmetry restoring quadrupole in-
refer to refs. [ 10,11 ].) In fact, the dominance of con-
teraction [20], and which made also predictions for
appreciable spin strength around 3.2 MeV for the
t Institut f'fir Kernphysik, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, cases t54Sm, 158Gd and 168Er.
D-6100 Darmstadt, FRG.
2 Physics Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, On- (ii) if spin M1 strength could be located at higher
tario, Canada M5S 1A7. energies (i.e. above 4 MeV) it would contribute to a

178 0370-2693/90/$ 03.50 1990 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

Volume 244, number 2
much needed clarification of the spin and orbital ex-
citation mechanisms in these nuclei.
That such a distinction can be made has recently
been shown by calculations performed by De Coster
and Heyde [21 ] for a series of nuclei in the A = 150
region. Here, the orbital M 1 strength is mainly lo-
cated below 4 MeV and clearly correlated with the
degree of the nuclear deformation. Above 4 MeV the
M 1 strength is largely of spin type and for the present
mass range independent of the nucleus. The total spin
strength amounts to about 10-15 #~. Speth et al.
[22 ], as well as Zawischa et al. [23 ] have performed
similar calculations using a more realistic interaction
and come to similar conclusions.
2. Experiment
The experiment was performed at the medium res-
olution spectrometer (MRS) at TRIUMF. Measure-
ments were made at two MRS angle settings and cover
an angular range between 3.4 ~ and 6.1 . A thin veto
scintillator paddle mounted at the appropriate posi-
tion in the MRS focal plane was used to identify and
accept a small fraction of elastically scattered pro-
25
20
LP 15
D- 10
2.~ 5
u")
c'~ 0
~20
,+.o
c 15
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Fig. 1. Proton spectra taken at 200 MeV incident energy for the target nuclei 154Sm, 158Gd, and 168Er at two different forward angles.
PHYSICS LETTERSB 19 July 1990
tons. The excellent track reconstruction capability of
the MRS allowed efficient background discrimina-
tion, which is an indispensable requirement at for-
ward angles. Beyond that, we have carefully exam-
ined any instrumental background contributions by
relaxing software constraints during event replay. In
all cases the background was found to be structure-
less in the excitation regions of interest.
The targets were isotopically enriched metallic foils
of 10 and 20 m g / c m z (158Gd) areal thickness. Con-
tinuous recording of the beam intensity using the yield
of the in-beam polarimeter [24 ] located upstream of
the target chamber allowed proper cross section nor-
malization. Energy resolution was better than 80 keV
FWHM.
3. Results and discussion
In fig. 1 we show spectra for the three nuclei, 1548m,
158Gd, and 168Er taken at angles O= 3.4 and 4.9 ,
and covering an excitation up to 12 MeV. At forward
angles, the high excitation region is dominated by
Coulomb excitation of the electric giant dipole reso-
nance ( G D R ) , which peaks at around 15 MeV, and
D . , D ~ Mev
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Ex [MeV]
179
Volume 244, number 2 PHYSICS LETTERS B
whose tail contributes to most of the "background"
at lower excitation. At 3.2 and 3.4 MeV we have
marked the positions of the 1+ states which are
strongly excited in (e,e') and (7,Y') [3,6,9,25]. In
our case these states are not excited above about
20~tb/sr (40~tb/sr for 158Gd) at the most forward an-
gle. This translates into upper limits for the spin
strengths Bo(M1 ) listed in table 1.
At energies between 6 and 10 MeV we observe in
all cases a structure superimposed onto the tail of the
GDR. In one case, 154Sm, e v e n individual states at
5.7 and 6.1 MeV occur. The structure is double-
peaked (most noticeably for 1548m) with centroids
at around 6 and 8.5 MeV and widths of about 1.5 and
2 MeV. The effect decreases rapidly with increasing
angle, thus indicating a A L = 0 transition. We do
however note, that any Coulomb-excited E1 transi-
tion will show an angular dependence largely indis-
tinguishable from a nuclear M 1 excitation.
Extraction of the observed strength is clearly de-
pendent on the shape of the underlying background.
We have taken a simple approach and assumed a
quadratic dependence for the background in the re-
gion from 5 to 10 MeV. More elaborate procedures
could be used, but as long as one assumes a smoothly
varying function o f energy, we feel the main result
remains largely unaffected. The profile of the back-
ground is indicated as a smooth solid line in fig. 1.
The systematic error induced by this procedure is es-
timated to be at around 20%.
In fig. 2 are presented angular distributions of the
integrated strength for the three nuclei. As one can
see, the cross section appears to be largely indepen-
dent of the nucleus. Further, we note that the magni-
tude of the cross section is compatible with the one
in 12'1248nand 14Ce from ref. [ 16].
An attempt was made to fit the data using a simple
Table 1
B ( M 1 ) and limits for B , ( M 1 ) values deduced from proton scat-
tering for 1 + states in deformed nuclei. The values for the total
strengths represent the s u m from various states in the _+ 100 keV
vicinity (from refs. [3,6,9,25] )
Nucleus Ex[MeV] B(M1 ) [/z~] B~(M1 ) [#2]
154Sm 3.19 2.5+_0.20 ,<0.1
tSSGd 3.20 2.3~-0.14 ~<0.2
L68Er 3.39 2.4~_0.20 ~<0.1
180
19 July 1990
10
1~4SIla
158Gd n
~9
[]
_O
E
'-o
b \\
~o \
0.1
4 6 8
s [d g]
Fig. 2. Angular distribution of the structures observed in fig. 1.
The solid line is a calculation based on a v (h 9/2, h fi)2) excitation
in these nuclei.
AS= 1, A L = 0 transition amplitude in a distorted
wave calculation (using the code DW81 ). We have
assumed a v ( h 9 /2, hll/2)
-1 configuration to represent
a spin excitation in this mass region. Although such a
configuration is not likely to be a correct description
of the nuclear wave function, it can be used rather
reliably to exact the strength B~ (M 1 ). Following the
notation'of ref. [26], the (p,p') cross section for a
spin M1 transition in the limit of zero momentum
transfer can be written as
where the distortion factor, N n = 0.16, has been de-
termined by comparing to a plane wave calculation.
The quantity Vo~ is the spin-isospin effective inter-
action t-matrix of Love and Franey [27 ], and the
matrix element, which describes the M 1 transition, is
proportional to B,(M1 ). Using this prescription to
fit the data, we deduce a total B~(M1 ) strength of
11 + 2/1~. This agrees well with calculations of refs.
[21,23], and is also consistent with values from
tagged photon experiments [ 17-19,28,29 ].
In view of the large number of quasi-particle states
expected at these excitation energies, the observed
concentration of M 1 strength is remarkable. Further,
the occurrence of a double structure deserves men-
tioning. In fig. 3 we have plotted the experimental
Volume 244, number 2
~g30 5
15,~
0.4
,m,O.2
b 0
4 5 6 7 8 9
3-
I
r---1
154~1~1
::L 2 -
e ture whose origin can only be speculated about at this
2 4 6 8
Ex [ M e V ]
Fig. 3. Extracted B(M1 ) strength function for 154Sm (upper part)
from the 3.4 measurements compared with calculations from
ref. [30] (lower part). Full and open circles mark proton and
neutron quasi-particle spin excitations, respectively.
B(M1 ) strength function for the 1548m case, where
the double structure is most clearly pronounced. It is
compared with results from the calculations of De
Coster and Heyde [30] for the same nucleus.
We first notice that the centroid of the calculated
strength is lower than the experimentally observed
one. Such an energy shift is expected since the calcu-
lations do not include the residual proton-neutron
interaction. Second, the calculations do predict a
splitting between the centroids of the proton and
neutron quasi-particle spin excitations. (This sepa-
ration is most dramatic in the calculation for the un-
stable nucleus 148Gd, see ref. [21 ] ). In the figure we
have marked the proton and neutron states differ-
ently. The separation of the centroids amounts to
about 1.5 MeV. However, the effect may become less
obvious once proton-neutron coupling; as well as the
effect of a finite resolution, is included.
The calculations of Zawischa et al. [23 ] as well as
previous calculations by Speth et al. [ 22 ] also give
some indication for a double structure in this mass
range. In particular, the heaviest system, 238U, ex-
hibits a pronounced effect [23 ]. Yet, it is stated that
the effect is not due to a splitting between K'~= 1 +
PHYSICS LETTERS B 19 July 1990
and K ~ = 0 + contributions. This is contrary to the
G D R which splits into K ~ = 1- and K ~ = 0 - parts
corresponding to vibrations along and perpendicular
to the symmetry axis.
4. Conclusion
10 We have presented evidence for spin excitations in
deformed nuclei using intermediate energy proton
scattering. The total strength is compatible with mi-
croscopic calculations and with expectations from
other measurements in the mass A ~ 100 and A ~ 200
region. The strength function exhibits a double struc-
stage. The measurements shed light on the various
mechanisms for 1 +-excitations in deformed nuclei.
10
Spin and orbital excitations are different in origin and
appear in different energy regions. Precision mea-
surements of the spin flip probability Snn which will
effectively remove the ambiguities in estimating the
physical (or systematic) background are forthcoming.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the
Bundesministerium ftir Forschung und Technologic
(BMFT), Federal Republic of G e r m a n y under con-
tract number 06DA184I.
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