Rotational bands in 238U

A thick foil of 238U was bombarded with 209Bi beams at 1130 and 1330 MeV, delivered by the TASCC facility at Chalk River Laboratories. Gamma-ray spectroscopy of states populated in multiple Coulomb excitation was performed with the 8π spectrometer, an instrument comprising 20 Compton-suppressed HPGe detectors and 71 BGO ball elements. The event trigger required that 3 BGO elements and 2 HPGe detectors fire in coincidence. The experiment achieved a high degree of sensitivity, the weakest rotational band observed had about 0.16% intensity of the ground state rotational band. Several bands were observed to high spin for the first time, including the γ-vibrational band (spin 27+) and the octupole bands with K=0 (spin 31-), K=1 (spin 28-) and K=2 (spin 25-). Results for positive and negative parity vibrational bands are compared with cranked RPA calculations. Although this theory can explain some features of the data, many puzzling aspects remain to be explored. (orig.)