Interpretation of the fragmentation of Nilsson strength amongst high-lying states in the Hf-Os region

It is shown that the significantly varying trends and some of the fine structure in the fragmentation of Nilsson strength among the high-lying states in the odd neutron nuclei near the end of the rare earth deformed region can be qualitatively explained as a natural outcome of rapidly varying quadrupole and hexadecapole deformations. While details of individual states can emerge only from calculations incorporating more degrees of freedom, an understanding of the gross behavior of ensembles of states in this neglected region of excitation thus appears possible in an unexpectedly simple way. (orig.)