Parity shift and beat staggering structure of octupole bands in a collective model for quadrupole-octupole deformed nuclei

We propose a collective model formalism which describes the strong parity shift observed in low-lying spectra of nuclei with octupole deformations together with the fine rotational band structure developed at higher angular momenta. The parity effect is obtained by the Schroedinger equation for oscillations of the reflection asymmetric (octupole) shape between two opposite orientations in an angular momentum dependent double-well potential. The rotational structure is obtained by a collective quadrupole-octupole rotation Hamiltonian. The model scheme reproduces the complicated beat staggering patterns observed in the octupole bands of light actinide nuclei. It explains the angular momentum evolution of octupole spectra as the interplay between the octupole shape oscillation (parity shift) mode and the stable quadrupole-octupole rotation mode.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Symmetries and staggering effects in nuclear rotational spectra

We study the fine structure of nuclear rotational spectra on the basis of both dynamical and discrete symmetry approaches. In this framework we show that the odd--even (Delta I = 1) staggering effects observed in various rotational bands carry detailed information about the collective band-mixing interactions and the collective shape properties of heavy nuclei.Comment: LaTeX, 4 pages plus 1 figure (.ps). To appear in the proceedings of the European Conference on the Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the Century (Bologna, Italy, 29/5/00-3/6/00), ed. G. Bonsignori et a

Staggering behavior of the low lying excited states of even-even nuclei in a Sp(4,R) classification scheme

We implement a high order discrete derivative analysis of the low lying collective energies of even-even nuclei with respect to the total number of valence nucleon pairs N in the framework of F- spin multiplets appearing in a symplectic sp(4,R) classification scheme. We find that for the nuclei of any given F- multiplet the respective experimental energies exhibit a Delta N=2 staggering behavior and for the nuclei of two united neighboring F- multiplets well pronounced Delta N=1 staggering patterns are observed. Those effects have been reproduced successfully through a generalized sp(4,R) model energy expression and explained in terms of the step-like changes in collective modes within the F- multiplets and the alternation of the F-spin projection in the united neighboring multiplets. On this basis we suggest that the observed Delta N=2 and Delta N=1 staggering effects carry detailed information about the respective systematic manifestation of both high order alpha - particle like quartetting of nucleons and proton (neutron) pairing interaction in nuclei.PACS number(s):21.10.Re, 21.60.FwComment: 22 pages and 6 figures changes in the figure caption