On the structure of rotational levels of atomic nuclei

Abstract

It is shown that two kinds of nuclear rotational levels exist. The first kind appears in light nuclei, but a clear rotational energy spectrum is only very seldom connected with this. The second kind appears rather regularly in heavy nuclei with large deformations. There are two other main differences between these two kinds of rotational levels. If in light nuclei a rotational energy spectrum is present, then this spectrum always breaks off abruptly, in contrast to the second kind of rotational spectrum. The second main difference is that the ratios of the γ-transition probabilities for the second kind of rotational levels can be described by the collective model. As opposed to this, the corresponding ratios of the first kind are reduced strongly compared with the values of the collective model. At the end of the paper more general questions are briefly discussed.