Triaxiality and isomeric states with high spins in nuclei near the N=82 shell closure

The existence of triaxial nuclei has been the subject of a long standing debate. The possibility of soft and rigid triaxiality has been proposed very early, and many theoretical and experimental studies have been devoted to this intriguing phenomenon since then. More recently two unique fingerprints of triaxiality in nuclei have been intensively studied: the wobbling motion and the dynamic chirality. These exotic types of motion were observed in specific regions of the nuclear chart: the wobbling motion in the odd-even Lu nuclei with A ∼ 160, the chirality primarily in the odd-odd and odd-even nuclei with A ∼ 130 nuclei. We have recently studied the Nd nuclei up to very high spins and identified several bands, which were interpreted as the manifestation of various types of collective motion: tilted axis rotation, principal axis rotation along the short and long axes, wobbling motion and chiral bands. Another phenomenon revealed by our recent results on the Nd nuclei with neutron numbers just below the N=82 shell closure, is the shape coexistence. In fact, these nuclei are predicted to have high-spin seniority isomers built on a spherical shape, coexisting with bands built on either triaxial, highly or even superdeformed shapes. My PhD consists of two experiments. Firstly I have prepared, performed and analyzed an experiment realized at the Research Center of Nuclear Physics (RCNP) of the Osaka University. This experiment was performed to study the isomeric states and to develop the level schemes of the 135La, 136La and 136Ba nuclei. We have used a radioactive 17N beam of 80 MeV created by the stripping reaction of 18O on a 9Be target and selected using an achromatic spectrometer. The 17N radioactive beam bombarded a 20 mg/cm2124Sn target to produce the nuclei of interest by a fusion-evaporation reaction. The present thesis presents the results obtained for 135La, which include the construction and discussion of the level scheme and the measurement of the lifetime of two known isomers. The second part of the thesis consists in the analysis of two different experiments performed using the same beam-target combination 48Ca + 96Zr at slightly different beam energies and two different setups, EUROBALL and JUROGAM II + RITU + GREAT, to study the neodymium isotopes from 138Nd to 141Nd. My work was focused on the even-even 138Nd and 140Nd nuclei, with special emphasis on 140Nd, which is discussed in the present thesis. The multitude of high-spin bands observed in this nucleus are discussed in the framework of Cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky (CNS) and Tilted Axis Cranking (TAC) models. The observed high-spin bands in 138-141Nd which are consistently interpreted as based on an energy minimum at triaxial deformation, represent a strong support for the existence of stable triaxial nuclear shapes at high spins. A 27- high-spin isomer has also been identified in 140Nd, which combined with the previous known 20+ isomer in the same nucleus allows the determination for the first time of an experimental value for the energy difference between the πh(11/2) and π[(d(5/2)g(7/2)) shells at high spins. (author)