Neutron Skin Effects in Mirror Energy Differences: The Case of ^{23}Mg-^{23}Na

Energy differences between analogue states in the T=1/2 ^{23}Mg-^{23}Na mirror nuclei have been measured along the rotational yrast bands. This allows us to search for effects arising from isospin-symmetry-breaking interactions (ISB) and/or shape changes. Data are interpreted in the shell model framework following the method successfully applied to nuclei in the f_{7/2} shell. It is shown that the introduction of a schematic ISB interaction of the same type of that used in the f_{7/2} shell is needed to reproduce the data. An alternative novel description, applied here for the first time, relies on the use of an effective interaction deduced from a realistic charge-dependent chiral nucleon-nucleon potential. This analysis provides two important results: (i) The mirror energy differences give direct insight into the nuclear skin; (ii) the skin changes along the rotational bands are strongly correlated with the difference between the neutron and proton occupations of the s_{1/2} "halo" orbit.

Neutron Skins and Halo Orbits in the sd and pf Shells

The strong dependence of Coulomb energies on nuclear radii makes it possible to extract the latter from calculations of the former. The resulting estimates of neutron skins indicate that two mechanisms are involved. The first one-isovector monopole polarizability-amounts to noting that when a particle is added to a system it drives the radii of neutrons and protons in different directions, tending to equalize the radii of both fluids independently of the neutron excess. This mechanism is well understood and the Duflo-Zuker (small) neutron skin values derived 14 years ago are consistent with recent measures and estimates. The alternative mechanism involves halo orbits whose huge sizes tend to make the neutron skins larger and have a subtle influence on the radial behavior of sd and pf shell nuclei. In particular, they account for the sudden rise in the isotope shifts of nuclei beyond N=28 and the near constancy of radii in the A=40-56 region. This mechanism, detected here for the first time, is not well understood and may well go beyond the Efimov physics usually associated with halo orbits.

New isomers in the full seniority scheme of neutron-rich lead isotopes: the role of effective three-body forces

The neutron-rich lead isotopes, up to (216)Pb, have been studied for the first time, exploiting the fragmentation of a primary uranium beam at the FRS-RISING setup at GSI. The observed isomeric states exhibit electromagnetic transition strengths which deviate from state-of-the-art shell-model calculations. It is shown that their complete description demands the introduction of effective three-body interactions and two-body transition operators in the conventional neutron valence space beyond (208)Pb.

Observation of 54Ni: cross-conjugate symmetry in f7/2 mirror energy differences

Gamma decays from excited states up to Jpi=6+ in the N=Z-2 nucleus 54Ni have been identified for the first time. Level energies are compared with those of the isobars 54Co and 54Fe and of the cross-conjugate nuclei of mass A=42. The good but puzzling f7/ cross-conjugate symmetry in mirror and triplet energy differences is analyzed. Shell model calculations reproduce the new data but the necessary nuclear charge-dependent phenomenology is not fully explained by modern nucleon-nucleon potentials.

1/f noise and very high spectral rigidity

It was recently pointed out that the spectral fluctuations of quantum systems are formally analogous to discrete time series, and therefore their structure can be characterized by the power spectrum of the signal. Moreover, it is found that the power spectrum of chaotic spectra displays a 1/f behavior, while that of regular systems follows a 1/f2 law. This analogy provides a link between the concepts of spectral rigidity and antipersistence. Trying to get a deeper understanding of this relationship, we have studied the correlation structure of spectra with high spectral rigidity. Using an appropriate family of random Hamiltonians, we increase the spectral rigidity up to hindering completely the spectral fluctuations. Analyzing the long range correlation structure a neat power law 1/f has been found for all the spectra, along the whole process. Therefore, 1/f noise is the characteristic fingerprint of a transition that, preserving the scale-free correlation structure, hinders completely the fluctuations of the spectrum.

Unusual isospin-breaking and isospin-mixing effects in the A=35 mirror nuclei

Excited states have been studied in 35Ar following the 16O(24Mg,1alpha1n)35Ar fusion-evaporation reaction at 60 MeV using the Ge-detector array GASP. A comparison with the mirror nucleus 35Cl shows two remarkable features: (i) A surprisingly large energy difference for the 13/2(-) states, in which the hitherto overlooked electromagnetic spin-orbit term is shown to play a major role, and (ii) a very different decay pattern for the 7/2(-) states, which provides direct evidence of isospin mixing.

Three-body monopole corrections to realistic interactions

It is shown that a very simple three-body monopole term can solve practically all the spectroscopic problems-in the p, sd, and pf shells-that were hitherto assumed to need drastic revisions of the realistic potentials.

Isobaric multiplet yrast energies and isospin nonconserving forces

The isovector and isotensor energy differences between yrast states of isobaric multiplets in the lower half of the pf region are quantitatively reproduced in a shell model context. The isospin nonconserving nuclear interactions are found to be at least as important as the Coulomb potential. Their isovector and isotensor channels are dominated by J=2 and J=0 pairing terms, respectively. The results are sensitive to the radii of the states, whose evolution along the yrast band can be accurately followed.

Spectroscopy with random and displaced random ensembles

Because of the time reversal invariance of the angular momentum operator J2, the average energies and variances at fixed J for random two-body Hamiltonians exhibit odd-even- J staggering that may be especially strong for J = 0. It is shown that upon ensemble averaging over random runs, this behavior is reflected in the yrast states. Displaced (attractive) random ensembles lead to rotational spectra with strongly enhanced B(E2) transitions for a certain class of model spaces. It is explained how to generalize these results to other forms of collectivity.

Coulomb energy differences in t = 1 mirror rotational bands in (50)Fe and (50)Cr

Gamma rays from the N = Z-2 nucleus (50)Fe have been observed, establishing the rotational ground state band up to the state J(pi) = 11+ at 6.994 MeV excitation energy. The experimental Coulomb energy differences, obtained by comparison with the isobaric analog states in its mirror (50)Cr, confirm the qualitative interpretation of the backbending patterns in terms of successive alignments of proton and neutron pairs. A quantitative agreement with experiment has been achieved by exact shell model calculations, incorporating the differences in radii along the yrast bands, and properly renormalizing the Coulomb matrix elements in the pf model space.