Orbital dependence of octupole deformation in heavy nuclei

Octupole deformations have been established in the ground states of several odd-mass Ra, Ac, Pa and Th nuclei. The data so far indicate large deformations in odd-proton nuclei than in odd-neutron nuclei. In the odd-proton nuclei the 5/2± parity doublet shows the strongest effects. The knowledge of octupole deformation and octupole correlations comes from the study of alpha and gamma transition rates, and from level spacings which indicate the size of the Coriolis matrix elements. Results are presented which show the dependence of octupole deformation on the orbital occupied by the odd nucleon. Recently some data have been obtained on odd-odd nuclei which, because of the presence of two unpaired nucleons, are expected to possess larger octupole correlations than the neighboring odd-mass nuclei. These results are discussed