Exotic nuclei are characterized by a number of neutrons (or protons) in excess relative to stable nuclei. Their shell structure, which represents single-particle motion in a nucleus, may vary due to nuclear force and excess neutrons, in a phenomenon called shell evolution. This effect could be counterbalanced by collective modes causing deformations of the nuclear surface. Here, we study the interplay between shell evolution and shape deformation by focusing on the magnetic moment of an isomeric state of the neutron-rich nucleus 75Cu. We measure the magnetic moment using highly spin-controlled rare-isotope beams and achieving large spin alignment via a two-step reaction scheme that incorporates an angular-momentum-selecting nucleon removal. By combining our experiments with numerical simulations of many-fermion correlations, we find that the low-lying states in 75Cu are, to a large extent, of single-particle nature on top of a correlated 74Ni core. We elucidate the crucial role of shell evolution even in the presence of the collective mode, and within the same framework, we consider whether and how the double magicity of the 78Ni nucleus is restored, which is also of keen interest from the perspective of nucleosynthesis in explosive stellar processes.
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