Deformation effects in 185 Au P. Joshi, * A Kumar, and I. M. Govil Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh 160014, India R. P. Singh, G. Mukherjee, S. Muralithar, and R. K. Bhowmik Nuclear Science Centre, Post Box 10502, New Delhi 110067, India U. Garg Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA (Received 12 September 2003; published 2 April 2004) The nucleus 185 Au was populated using the reaction 159 Tb 30 Si,4n 185 Au at 140 MeV beam energy. Life- times for the E2 transitions in h 9/2 and i 13/2 bands have been measured using recoil distance method. The reduced transition probabilities BE2and transitional quadrupole moments Q t were extracted using the mea- sured lifetimes. Calculations of quasiparticle Routhians and total Routhian surfaces (TRS) have been per- formed to investigate the effect of the - as well as the -driving properties of these configurations in this nucleus. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.69.044304 PACS number(s): 21.10.Tg, 21.10.Ky, 27.70.+q I. INTRODUCTION The deformation-driving properties of the high- j intruder configurations built upon h 9/2 and i 13/2 orbitals have been an interesting point of investigation in the Z =73–79 and A =170–180 mass region [1–7]. It is believed that these orbits belonging to the higher-N shells come down rapidly as a function of the quadrupole deformation and polarize the nuclear shape towards large values. Because of their large slopes on the axis, they do not mix with the other j con- figurations and hence keep their deformation-driving ten- dency alive. However, it is still possible for them to mix with the other K configurations of the same j orbital as a function of triaxiality . The net deformation-driving tendency would, therefore, depend upon the slope of the energy of these orbitals in the -two-dimensional surface. Light gold nuclei A 185are good candidates for studying these effects since their proton Fermi level lies closer to these two high- j intruder proton configurations, namely h 9/2 5411/2 - and i 13/2 6601/2 + . The h 9/2 configuration in these nuclei has a quasiparticle nature since it lies closer to the Fermi surface when compared with the i 13/2 configuration which lies above the Fermi surface and is understood to have the shape polar- izing tendency. It is, therefore, generally expected that the band built on the i 13/2 configuration would have a larger quadrupole deformation compared to the band built on the h 9/2 configuration. Our previous measurements on 183 Au nucleus [6] have shown similar deformation-driving effects. In order to have a more systematic investigation of this effect in this mass region, we have performed lifetime measure- ments in the rotational bands built upon h 9/2 and i 13/2 con- figurations in the 185 Au nucleus. II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS AND DATA ANALYSIS The reaction 159 Tb 30 Si,4nwas used to populate high spin states in 185 Au. A 140 MeV 30 Si beam was provided by the 15 UD pelletron accelerator at NSC, New Delhi. The Gamma Detector Array [8] consisting of 12 Compton sup- pressed HPGe detectors was used for detecting the rays, with a 14-element BGO array used as a multiplicity filter. *Present address: Physics Department, University of York, YO10 5DD, York, UK. FIG. 1. The shifted (S) and unshifted (U) peaks at various target to stopper distances for 185 Au nucleus. PHYSICAL REVIEW C 69, 044304 (2004) 0556-2813/2004/69(4)/044304(5)/$22.50 ©2004 The American Physical Society 69 044304-1