The fission probability of 232Pa was measured as a function of the excitation
energy in order to search for hyperdeformed (HD) transmission resonances using
the (d,pf) transfer reaction on a radioactive 231Pa target. The experiment was
performed at the Tandem accelerator of the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory (MLL) at
Garching using the 231Pa(d,pf) reaction at a bombarding energy of E=12 MeV and
with an energy resolution of dE=5.5 keV. Two groups of transmission resonances
have been observed at excitation energies of E=5.7 and 5.9 MeV. The fine
structure of the resonance group at E=5.7 MeV could be interpreted as
overlapping rotational bands with a rotational parameter characteristic to a HD
nuclear shape. The fission barrier parameters of 232Pa have been determined by
fitting TALYS 1.2 nuclear reaction code calculations to the overall structure
of the fission probability. From the average level spacing of the J=4 states,
the excitation energy of the ground state of the 3rd minimum has been deduced
to be E(III)=5.05 MeV.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure
