Coupling between the β and γ vibration in tungsten nuclei

The quadrupole collectivity in /sup 182-184/W has been studied by means of heavy-ion coulomb excitation with 58Ni and 136Xe projectiles; the deexcitation γ rays were measured in γ-p-p triple coincidence experiments. These data were used to determine, model-independently, both the static and transition matrix elements for the low-lying states in these nuclei with a semiclassical Coulomb-excitation least-squares search code. The results for the quadrupole moments of the second 2+ states and the E2 transitions between the γ band and the ground-state band in these nuclei do not support the prediction of a strong mixing between the β- and γ-vibrational bands in tungsten nuclei made by the pairing-plus-quadrupole model of Kumar and Baranger