Evidence for Coexisting Shapes through Lifetime Measurements in Zr 98

Abstract

The lifetimes of the first excited 2+, 4+, and 6+ states in Zr98 were measured with the recoil-distance Doppler shift method in an experiment performed at GANIL. Excited states in Zr98 were populated using the fission reaction between a 6.2 MeV/u U238 beam and a Be9 target. The γ rays were detected with the EXOGAM array in correlation with the fission fragments identified by mass and atomic number in the VAMOS++ spectrometer. Our result shows a very small B(E2;21+→01+) value in Zr98, thereby confirming the very sudden onset of collectivity at N=60. The experimental results are compared to large-scale Monte Carlo shell model and beyond-mean-field calculations. The present results indicate the coexistence of two additional deformed shapes in this nucleus along with the spherical ground state.