107The commutator method which was previously proposed for the purpose of calculating hindered matrix elements is applied to the Gamow.Teller beta matrix elements of heavier nuclei. It is shown that a number of empirical ft-values of the unfavored transitions can be well reproduced in terms of the conventional pairing model without invoking the phenomenological effective coupling constant. It is also shown that the !-forbidden transitions can be treated on the same footing as the unfavored ones. In such a treatment tensor forces play an important role. General forms of the effective single-body transition operators are derived on the basis of the commutator method, and qualitative discussions are given. § 1. Introduction Since the experimental discovery 1 l of the isobaric analogue states (IAS) in the (p, n) reactions of heavier nuclei, significant progress has been made 2 l, 3 l in understanding the role of isotopic spin for heavier nuclei. Several authors 3 l' 4 l discussed the extent of breakdown of the isospin symmetry for heavier nuclei and showed that the probability of admixed states with higher isospins is only about 3% for a very heavy nucleus. However, Lane and Soper 5 l asserted that even if the isospin is not a very good quantmn number, widths of the isobaric states can be very small ( < 100 ke V). The idea of "persistence of symmetry" which was thus born in the study of isobaric analogue states can also be applied to reexamining the beta decay matrix elements. 6 l' 7 l Actually the Gamow-Teller (GT) matrix element seems to be the best example of such a persistent symmetry, with which we shall be concerned in this paper.In general three stages of a broken symmetry can be defined; a) the exact, b) approximate and c) persistent symmetries. The first one does not correspond to any physical reality. The second one has a good example, namely the Fermi matrix elements J 1, as is clear from the arguments on the IAS. 7 J,SJ The ground or low-lying states of a heavier nucleus (N, Z) have an approximately good isospin T~Tz = (N-Z) /2, so that the Fermi transition from a ground to ground or a ground to low-lying states is expected to be severely hindered because of the isospin selection rule. However, such a consequence of symmetry requirement may persist in the case when the symmetry is significantly broken. An example of "persistent synunetry" is the Gamow-Teller transition.If the by guest on August 11, 2015 http://ptp.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 108 J. Fujita, Y. Futami and K. Ikeda supermultiplet symmetril is valid, the Gamow-Teller transitions among the states belonging to different supermultiplets are forbidden. However, even if the supermultiplet symmetry is significantly broken, the effect of the supermultiplet symmetry can survive according to terms. In other words, the supermultiplet model is not a good model for individual states of a heavy nucleus, but in considering a nucleus in reference to the neighboring one, we can recognize a clear trace of the symmetry requirement. (See Fig. 1.) a) b) ...