High-spin states in doubly odd 176 Re and signature inversion in h 9/2 i 13/2 structures M. A. Cardona, 1,2 A. J. Kreiner, 1,2,4 D. Hojman, 1,2,4 G. Levinton, 1 M. E. Debray, 1,2 M. Davidson, 3,4 J. Davidson, 3,4 R. Pirchio, 3 H. Somacal, 1,2 D. R. Napoli, 5 D. Bazzacco, 6 N. Blasi, 7 R. Burch, 5 D. De Acun ˜ a, 5 S. M. Lenzi, 6 G. Lo Bianco, 7 J. Rico, 5 and C. Rossi Alvarez 6 1 Departamento de Fı ´sica, Comisio ´n Nacional de Energı ´a Ato ´mica, 1429 Buenos Aires, Argentina 2 Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnologı ´a, Universidad de San Martı ´n, 1650 San Martı ´n, Argentina 3 Departamento de Fı ´sica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina 4 CONICET, 1033 Buenos Aires, Argentina 5 INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, Legnaro, Italy 6 Dipartimento di Fisica, Sezione di Padova, Padova, Italy 7 Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy Received 17 August 1998 High-spin states in doubly odd 176 Re were investigated by means of in-beam -ray spectroscopy techniques using the multidetector array GASP. Excited states of 176 Re were populated using the 165 Ho( 16 O,5n ) reaction at a beam energy of 101 MeV. Seven rotational bands have been observed and their configurations have been discussed. Alignments, band crossing frequencies, and electromagnetic properties have been analyzed in the framework of the cranking model. Signature inversion phenomena in the h 11/2 i 13/2 and h 9/2 i 13/2 structures are discussed. In the latter case signature inversion is traced to a large repulsive matrix element of the p -n force acting in the maximally aligned J =11 state. S0556-28139904702-0 PACS numbers: 21.10.Re, 21.60.Ev, 23.20.Lv, 27.70.+q I. INTRODUCTION The study of doubly odd nuclei has provided, for about two decades now 1, a fruitful ground for the discovery and discussion of a number of interesting nuclear structure phe- nomena. One recurrent theme 1–3has been the attempt to establish a general classification scheme for the coupling modes of two nonidentical valence nucleons, leading to semidecoupled 1,4, doubly decoupled 4,5, and com- pressed structures 2. A particularly interesting phenomenon discovered along the way was that of signature inversion 6,7. The present study of the doubly odd nucleus 176 Re is framed into the above context. It has been reexamined using the GASP detector array at the Legnaro Tandem Facility yielding a wealth of rotational structures where the above- mentioned ideas can be tested. In particular a signature in- version is found at high spins in the h 9/2 i 13/2 semide- coupled structure, a feature recently discovered in 162,164 Tm and 174 Ta 8,9and its origin discussed in terms of the ex- perimental proton-neutron force present in 208 Bi 10. A partial study concerning the doubly decoupled band in 176 Re has already been published 11and preliminary re- sults of the level scheme have been reported earlier 12. II. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS A. Measurements High-spin states of 176 Re were populated through the 165 Ho( 16 O,5n ) reaction at 101 MeV. The target consisted of a2 mg/cm 2 Ho rolled foil, backed with a 1.5 mg/cm 2 evaporated Bi layer. The beam was provided by the Tandem XTU accelerator of Legnaro and -rays emitted by the evaporation residues were detected using the GASP array 13, which consisted for this coincidence experiment of 39 Compton suppressed large volume Ge detectors, a planar de- tector and a multiplicity filter of 80 bismuth germanate BGOelements, providing the sum-energy and -ray mul- tiplicity used to select the different reaction channels. Events were collected when at least three suppressed Ge and three inner multiplicity filter detectors were fired. With this condi- tion a total of 10 9 events were recorded. The data corre- sponding to Ge energies ( E ) were sorted into fully symme- trized matrices and cubes. The large number of triple coincidences offered the possibility to generate matrices gated by transitions of the different bands of 176 Re and to obtain very clean double-gated spectra. A nonsymmetrized matrix of the planar against all the large volume Ge detectors was very useful to examine the low-energy region of the spectra with the high-energy resolution of the planar detec- tor. Known bands in 176 Re 14were extended up to 28–29, and the assignment of new bands to 176 Re was based on coincidence data, multiplicity distributions, coinci- dences with Re K x rays and the knowledge of the neighbor- ing Re isotopes. The most intensely populated nuclei were 175,176,177 Re 15–17, 175,176 W 15,16, and 173 Ta 18corre- sponding to the 6 n , 5 n , 4 n , 5 np , 4 np , and 3 n chan- nels, respectively. In the off-line analysis of the data the 5 n channel leading to 176 Re was enhanced by setting a proper gate on the multiplicity spectrum of the BGO ball. A matrix of -ray energy in the Ge detectors vs BGO multiplicity was used to find assignments of transitions to different reaction products. Figure 1 shows the BGO multiplicity spectra ob- tained by setting gates on pure transitions belonging to 177 Re, 176 Re, and 175 Re. In the spectra the mean value of the multiplicity distribution is indicated, the variation of the av- erage multiplicity with the number of evaporated neutrons is apparent. According to this analysis and to the coincidence with Re K x rays, the 320.3 and the 504.1 keV transitions were assigned to 176 Re Figs. 1cand 1d. The Ge times ( t ) were measured with respect to the fast signal provided by the multiplicity filter. For each Ge detector a matrix E PHYSICAL REVIEW C MARCH 1999 VOLUME 59, NUMBER 3 PRC 59 0556-2813/99/593/129818/$15.00 1298 ©1999 The American Physical Society