Investigation of excited 0⁺ states in ¹⁶⁰Er populated via the (p, t) two-neutron transfer reaction

¹ Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
² TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 2A3, Canada
³ Technische Universität München, D-85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, D-85748 Garching, Germany
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada
⁶ Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA
⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape, P/B X17, Bellville ZA-7535, South Africa
⁸ iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences, P.O. Box 722, Somerset West 7129, South Africa

^* e-mail: cburbadg@uoguelph.ca

Published online: 16 May 2018

Abstract

Many efforts have been made in nuclear structure physics to interpret the nature of low-lying excited 0⁺ states in well-deformed rare-earth nuclei. However, one of the difficulties in resolving the nature of these states is that there is a paucity of data. In this work, excited 0⁺ states in the N = 92 nucleus ¹⁶⁰Er were studied via the ¹⁶²Er(p, t)¹⁶⁰Er two-neutron transfer reaction, which is ideal for probing 0⁺ → 0⁺ transitions, at the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium in Garching, Germany. Reaction products were momentum-analyzed with a Quadrupole-3-Dipole magnetic spectrograph. The 0⁺₂ state was observed to be strongly populated with 18% of the ground state strength.