Abstract
Background: The Xe isotopic chain with four valence protons above the Z=50 shell closure is an ideal laboratory for the study of the evolution of nuclear deformation. At the N=82 shell closure, ¹³⁶Xe presents all characteristics of a doubly closed shell nucleus with a spherical shape. In the very neutron-deficient isotopes close to N=50, the α-decay chain of Xe was investigated to probe the radioactive decay properties near the drip-line and the magicity of ¹⁰⁰Sn. Additionally, the Xe isotopes present higher order symmetries in the nuclear deformation such as the octupole degree of freedom near N=60 and N=90 or O(6) symmetry in stable isotopes.
Purpose: The relevance of the O(6) symmetry has been investigated by measuring the spectroscopic quadrupole moment of the first excited states in 124 Xe. In the O(6) symmetry limit, the spectroscopic quadrupole moment of collective states is expected to be null.
Method: A stable ¹²⁴Xe beam with energies of 4.03A MeV and 4.11A MeV was used to bombard a nat. W target at the GANIL facility. Excited states were populated via the safe Coulomb excitation reaction. The collision of the heavy ions with a large Z at low energy make this reaction sensitive to the diagonal E2 matrix element of the excited states. The recoils were detected in the VAMOS++ magnetic spectrometer and the γ-rays in the AGATA tracking array. The least squares fitting code GOSIA was used for the analysis to extract both E2 and M1 transitional and E2 diagonal matrix elements.
Results: The rotational ground state band was populated up to the 8 + 1 state as well as the 2 + 2 and 4 + 2 states. Using high precision spectroscopic data to constrain the GOSIA fit, the spectroscopic quadrupole moments of the 2 + 1 , 4 + 1 and 6 + 1 states were determined for the first time.
Conclusions: The spectroscopic quadrupole moments were found to be negative, large and constant in the ground state band underlining the prolate axially deformed ground state band of ¹²⁴Xe. The present experimental data confirm that the O(6) symmetry is substantially broken in ¹²⁴Xe.