Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 13: Structure and Dynamics of Nuclei III

HK 13.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 17:30–17:45, AM 00.011

First measurement of lifetimes of excited states in ¹⁷⁶Hg — •C.-D. Lakenbrink¹, C. Müller-Gatermann², C. Fransen¹, M. P. Carpenter², A. Didik¹, C. Heymer¹, J. Jolie¹, D. Seweryniak², and K. Wimmer¹ — ¹Institute for Nuclear Physics, University of Cologne — ²Physics Division, Argonne Nat’l Laboratory

The neutron-deficient mercury isotopes are known to exhibit shape coexistence between a weakly-deformed oblate π(0p-2h) and a prolate π(4p-6h) configuration [1]. For the very neutron-deficient nucleus ¹⁷⁶Hg the excitation energies of the 4₁⁺ and 6₁⁺ states lie at the crossing of these two configurations making an assignment from energy systematics ambiguous [1,2]. Also from the kinematic moments of inertia a structural change is expected between the 2₁⁺ and 8₁⁺ states. Transition strengths in the neighboring ¹⁷⁸Hg suggest a configuration mixing in the 2₁⁺ state and different theoretical models predict this to be the onset of a shape transition with decreasing neutron number [3].
Thus an investigation of transition strengths between the low-lying yrast states in ¹⁷⁶Hg was conducted. The experiment was performed at ANL employing the recoil distance method and recoil-decay tagging.

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under contract number FR 3276/3-1 and by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-06CH11357. It used resources of ANL’s ATLAS facility, which is a DOE User Facility.

[1] R. Julin et al., J. Phys. G 27, R109 (2001)

[2] L.P. Gaffney et al., Phys. Rev. C 89, 024307 (2014)

[3] C. Müller-Gatermann et al., Phys. Rev. C 99, 054325 (2019)

Keywords: Shape Coexistence; Exotic Nuclei; Lifetime Measurements; Plunger