``Beat patterns are shown to appear in the octupole bands of several actinides and rare earths, their appearance being independent from the formula used in order to isolate and demonstrate them. It is shown that the recent formalism, making use of discrete approximations to derivatives of the transition energies (or of the energy levels) gives results consistent with the traditional formulae. In both regions it is seen that the first vanishing of the staggering occurs at higher values of the angular momentum I in nuclei exhibiting higher staggering at low I. Since these nuclei happen to be good rotators, the observed slow decrease of the amplitude of the staggering with increasing I is in good agreement with the parameter independent predictions of the su(3) (rotational) limit of several algebraic models. In the actinides it has been found that within each series of isotopes the odd-even staggering exhibits minima at N=134 and N=146, while a local maximum is shown at N=142, these findings being in agreement with the recent suggestion of a secondary maximum of octupole deformation around N=146.
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