Highly-distorted and double-decoupled rotational bands in odd-odd nuclei

Heavy-ion reactions induce large amounts of angular momentum; hence, they selectively populate rotationally-aligned particle states in compound nuclei. Such states tend to deexcite through similar states connected by large coriolis matrix elements, resulting in relatively few - but highly distorted - bands in the lower-energy portions of odd-odd spectra. The extreme cases of this are doubly-decoupled, K ∼ 1 (π 1/2 x ν1/2) bands, whose γ transitions are the most intense in spectra from many light Re and Ir nuclei. The authors made a two-pronged assault on such bands, studying them via different HI reactions at different laboratories and using interacting-boson (IBFFA) calculations to aid in sorting them out. They are beginning to understand the types of (primarily coriolis) distortions involved and hope to grasp a handle on aspects of the p-n residual interaction, although the coriolis distortions are large enough to mask much of the latter. They also discuss similar but complementary effects in the light Pr region