Impacts of hexadecapole deformations on the collective energy spectra of axially deformed nuclei

Abstract

The hexadecapole deformation, as well as the quadrupole one, influences the low-lying states of finite nuclei. The hexadecapole correlations are often overshadowed by the large quadrupole effects, and hence have not been much investigated. Here we address the relevance of hexadecapole deformations in the calculations of low-energy collective states of heavy nuclei, by using the theoretical framework of the self-consistent mean-field method and the interacting-boson approximation. The interacting-boson Hamiltonian that explicitly includes the quadrupole and hexadecapole collective degrees of freedom is specified by a choice of the energy density functional and pairing interaction. In an illustrative application to axially deformed Gd isotopes, it is shown that the inclusion of the hexadecapole degree of freedom does not affect most of the low-spin and low-lying states qualitatively, but that has notable effects in that it significantly improves the description of high-spin states of the ground-state bands of nearly spherical vibrational nuclei and gives rise to $K^{\pi }=4^{+}$ bands exhibiting strong $E4$ transitions in strongly deformed nuclei.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Relativistic Continuum Hartree Bogoliubov Theory for Ground State Properties of Exotic Nuclei
• Relativistic Nuclear Energy Density Functionals: adjusting parameters to binding energies
• Status and Future of Nuclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay: A Review
• Microscopic Formulation of Interacting Boson Model for Rotational Nuclei
• Evidence of Hexadecapole Deformation in Uranium-238 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Correlating radii and electric monopole transitions of atomic nuclei
• Hexadecapole strength in the rare isotopes ${}^{74,76}$Kr

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Microscopic description of hexadecapole collectivity in even-even rare-earth nuclei near $N=90$
• Microscopic description of quadrupole-hexadecapole coupling in radium, thorium, uranium and plutonium isotopes with the Gogny energy density functional
• Quadrupole-hexadecapole correlations in neutron-rich samarium and gadolinium isotopes
• Mapped interacting boson model for nuclear structure studies
• Imprints of octupole collectivity in uranium-238 on relativistic heavy-ion flow observables
• Impacts of hexadecapole correlations in actinide nuclei