There is strong circumstantial evidence that the shape of atomic nuclei with particular values of Z and N prefers to assume octupole deformation, in which the nucleus is distorted into a pear shape that loses the reflection symmetry of a quadrupole-deformed (rugby ball) shape prevalent in nuclei. Recently, useable intensities of accelerated beams of heavy, radioactive ions have become available at the REX-ISOLDE facility at CERN. This has allowed electric octupole transition strengths, a direct measure of octupole correlations, to be determined for short-lived isotopes of radon and radium expected to be unstable to pear-like distortions. The data are used to discriminate differing theoretical approaches to the description of the octupole phenomena, and also help restrict the choice of candidates for studies of atomic electric-dipole moments, that provide stringent tests of extensions to the Standard Model.

We consider a classical equation known as the φ 4 model in one space dimension. The kink, defined by H(x) = tanh(x/ √ 2), is an explicit stationary solution of this model. From a result of Henry, Perez and Wreszinski [15] it is known that the kink is orbitally stable with respect to small perturbations of the initial data in the energy space. In this paper we show asymptotic stability of the kink for odd perturbations in the energy space. The proof is based on Virial-type estimates partly inspired from previous works of Martel and Merle on asymptotic stability of solitons for the generalized Korteweg-de Vries equations ([25], [26]). However, this approach has to be adapted to additional difficulties, pointed out by Soffer and Weinstein [37] in the case of general Klein-Gordon equations with potential: the interactions of the so-called internal oscillation mode with the radiation, and the different rates of decay of these two components of the solution in large time.

The Coulomb excitation experiment to study electromagnetic properties of the heaviest stable Mo isotope, 100 Mo, was performed using a 76 MeV 32 S beam from the Warsaw cyclotron U-200P. Magnitudes and relative signs of 26 E1, E2, E3, and M1 matrix elements coupling nine low-lying states in 100 Mo were determined using the least-squares code GOSIA. Diagonal matrix elements (related to the spectroscopic quadrupole moments) of the 2 + 1 , 2 + 2 , and 2 + 3 states as well as the 4 + 1 state were extracted. The resulting set of reduced E2 matrix elements was complete and precise enough to obtain, using the quadrupole sum rules approach, quadrupole deformation parameters of 100 Mo in its two lowest 0 + states: ground and excited. The overall deformation of the 0 + 1 and 0 + 2 states in 100 Mo is of similar magnitude, in both cases larger compared to what was found for the neighboring isotopes 96 Mo and 98 Mo. At the same time, the asymetry parameters obtained for both states strongly differ, indicating a triaxial shape of the 100 Mo nucleus in the ground state and a prolate shape in the excited 0 + state. Low-energy quadrupole excitations of the 100 Mo nucleus were studied in the frame of the general quadrupole collective Bohr Hamiltonian model (GBH). The potential energy and inertial functions were calculated using the adiabatic time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (ATDHFB) method starting from two possible variants of the Skyrme effective interaction: SIII and Sly4. The overall quadrupole deformation parameters resulting from the GBH calculations with the SLy4 variant of the Skyrme interaction are slightly closer to the experimentally obtained values than those obtained using SIII.

Heavy-ion collisions often produce fusion barrier distributions with structures displaying a fingerprint of couplings to highly collective excitations. Similar distributions can be obtained from large-angle quasielastic scattering, although in this case, the role of the many weak direct-reaction channels is unclear. For 20Ne+90Zr, we have observed the barrier structures expected for the highly deformed neon projectile; however, for 20Ne+92Zr, we find significant extra absorption into a large number of noncollective inelastic channels. This leads to smearing of the barrier distribution and a consequent reduction in the “resolving power” of the quasielastic method

The results of the Doppler-shift attenuation method lifetime measurements in partner bands of 128Cs and 132La are presented. Experimental reduced transition probabilities in 128Cs are compared with theoretical calculations done in the frame of the core-quasiparticle coupling model. The electromagnetic properties, energy and spin of levels belonging to the partner bands show that 128Cs is the best known example revealing the chiral symmetry breaking phenomenon.