Possible conservation of the K-quantum number in excited rotating nuclei

The γ-cascades feeding into low-K and high-K bands in the nucleus 163Er are investigated by analyzing variances and covariances of the spectrum fluctuations. The study of the covariance between pairs of gated spectra reveals that the cascades feeding into the low-K bands are completely different from those feeding the high-K bands. In addition, the number of decay paths obtained analyzing the ridge and the valley in spectra gated by high-K transitions is different than that deduced from the total spectrum. This result is well reproduced with microscopic calculations of strongly interacting bands. It is concluded that the K-selection rules are effective for the excited rotational bands within the angular momentum region probed by the experiment, 30ℎ ≤ I ≤ 40ℎ