New high spin states and isomers in the 208Pb and 207Pb nuclei

The two most prominent examples of the heavy doubly closed shell (DCS) nuclei, 208Pb and 132Sn, are not accessible by conventional heavy-ion fusion processes populating high-spin states. This experimental difficulty obscured for a long time the investigation of yrast high-spin states in both DCS and neighboring nuclei and consequently restricted the study of the shell model in its most attractive regions. Recent technical development of multidetector gamma arrays opened new ways to exploit more complex nuclear processes which populate the nuclei of interest with suitable yields for gamma spectroscopy and involve population of moderately high spin states. This new possibility extended the range of accessible spin values and is a promising way to reach new yrast states. Some of these states are expected to be of high configurational purity and can be a source of important shell model parameters which possibly can be used later to check the validity of the spherical shell model description at yet higher spin and higher excitation energy. The nuclei in the closest vicinity of 132Sn are produced in spontaneous fission and states with spin values up to I=14 can be reached in fission gamma spectroscopy studies with the presently achieved sensitivity of gamma arrays. New results on yrast states in the 134Te and 135I nuclei populated in fission of the 248Cm presented at this conference illustrate such application of the resolving power offered by modern gamma techniques