Scissors Mode in Gd Nuclei

Abstract

Spectra of γ rays following neutron capture at isolated resonances of 6 stable Gd isotopes were measured with highly segmented BaF2 detector DANCE at the Los Alamos LANSCE spallation neutron source. The main emphasis was put on studying the γ-cascade decay of neutron resonances to get unique information on photon strength. An analysis of the accumulated γ-ray spectra within the extreme statistical model leads to an inescapable conclusion that scissors mode resonances are built not only on the ground-state, but also on excited levels in all product nuclei studied. The results on summed B(M1)↑ strength and energy of the scissors mode are compared with systematics of scissors mode parameters for the ground-state transitions deduced from nuclear resonance fluorescence measurements. A specific feature of our experiments is the investigation of scissors mode of odd nuclei, for which the nuclear resonance fluorescence provides only limited information.