No Arabic abstract
A novel dual-shell mechanism for the phenomenon of shape coexistence in nuclei within the Elliott SU(3) and the proxy-SU(3) symmetry is proposed for all mass regions. It is supposed, that shape coexistence is activated by large quadrupole-quadrupole interaction and involves the interchange among the spin-orbit (SO) like shells within nucleon numbers 6-14, 14-28, 28-50, 50-82, 82-126, 126-184, which are being described by the proxy-SU(3) symmetry, and the harmonic oscillator (HO) shells within nucleon numbers 2-8, 8-20, 20-40, 40-70, 70-112, 112-168 of the Elliott SU(3) symmetry. The outcome is, that shape coexistence may occur in certain islands on the nuclear map. The dual-shell mechanism predicts without any free parameters, that nuclei with proton number (Z) or neutron number (N) between 7-8, 17-20, 34-40, 59-70, 96-112, 146-168 are possible candidates for shape coexistence. In the light nuclei the nucleons flip from the HO shell to the neighboring SO-like shell, which means, that particle excitations occur. For this mass region, the predicted islands of shape coexistence, coincide with the islands of inversion. But in medium mass and heavy nuclei, in which the nucleons inhabit the SO-like shells, shape coexistence is accompanied by a merging of the SO-like shell with the open HO shell. The shell merging can be accomplished by the outer product of the SU(3) irreps of the two shells and represents the unification of the HO shell with the SO-like shell.
The proxy-SU(3) symmetry has been proposed for spin-orbit like nuclear shells using the asymptotic deformed oscillator basis for the single particle orbitals, in which the restoration of the symmetry of the harmonic oscillator shells is achieved by a change of the number of quanta in the z-direction by one unit for the intruder parity orbitals. The same definition suffices within the cartesian basis of the Elliott SU(3) model. Through a mapping of the cartesian Elliott basis onto the spherical shell model basis, we translate the proxy-SU(3) approximation into spherical coordinates, proving, that in the spherical shell model basis the proxy-SU(3) approximation corresponds to the replacement of the intruder parity orbitals by their de Shalit--Goldhaber partners. Furthermore it is shown, that the proxy-SU(3) approximation in the cartesian Elliott basis is equivalent to a unitary transformation in the z-coordinate, leaving the x-y plane intact, a result which in the asymptotic deformed oscillator coordinates implies, that the z-projections of angular momenta and spin remain unchanged. The present work offers a microscopic justification of the proxy-SU(3) approximation and in addition paves the way, for taking advantage of the proxy-SU(3) symmetry in shell model calculations.
The SU(3) irreducible representations (irreps) are characterised by the (lambda, mu) Elliott quantum numbers, which are necessary for the extraction of the nuclear deformation, the energy spectrum and the transition probabilities. These irreps can be calculated through a code which requires high computational power. In the following text a hand-writing method is presented for the calculation of the highest weight (h.w.) irreps, using two different sets of magic numbers, namely proxy-SU(3) and three-dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator.
In the Elliott SU(3) symmetry scheme the single particle basis is derived from the isotropic harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian in the Cartesian coordinate system. These states are transformed into the solutions of the same Hamiltonian within the spherical coordinate system. Then the spin-orbit coupling can be added in a straightforward way. The outcome is a transformation between the Elliott single particle basis and the spherical shell model space.
The systematics of experimental energy differences between the levels of the ground state band and the gamma-1 band in even-even nuclei are studied as a function of the angular momentum L, demonstrating a decrease of the energy differences with increasing L, in contrast to what is seen in vibrational, gamma-unstable, and triaxial nuclei. After a short review of the relevant predictions of several simple collective models, it is shown that this decrease is caused in the framework of the proxy-SU(3) scheme by the same three-body and/or four body operators which break the degeneracy between the ground state band and the gamma-1 band, predicting in parallel the correct form of odd-even staggering within the gamma-1 bands.
We present a review of the pseudo-SU(3) shell model and its application to heavy deformed nuclei. The model have been applied to describe the low energy spectra, B(E2) and B(M1) values. A systematic study of each part of the interaction within the Hamiltonian was carried out. The study leads us to a consistent method of choosing the parameters in the model. A systematic application of the model for a sequence of rare earth nuclei demonstrates that an overarching symmetry can be used to predict the onset of deformation as manifested through low-lying collective bands.The scheme utilizes an overarching sp(4,R) algebraic framework.