Emergence of High-Order Deformation in Rotating Transfermium Nuclei: A Microscopic Understanding

TL;DR

This paper uses a microscopic, self-consistent approach to study the rotational properties of transfermium nuclei, revealing that octupole deformation explains differences in their rotational behavior and solving a long-standing puzzle.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive microscopic method to analyze transfermium nuclei, highlighting the importance of octupole deformation in their rotational properties.

Findings

Reproduces moments of inertia without adjustable parameters.

Identifies octupole deformation as key to different rotational behaviors.

Provides a microscopic explanation for the rotational puzzle in No isotopes.

Abstract

The rotational properties of the transfermium nuclei are investigated in the full deformation space by implementing a shell-model-like approach in the cranking covariant density functional theory on a three-dimensional lattice, where the pairing correlations, deformations, and moments of inertia are treated in a microscopic and self-consistent way. The kinematic and dynamic moments of inertia of the rotational bands observed in the transfermium nuclei $^{252}$No, $^{254}$No, $^{254}$Rf, and $^{256}$Rf are well reproduced without any adjustable parameters using a well-determined universal density functional. It is found for the first time that the emergence of the octupole deformation should be responsible for the significantly different rotational behavior observed in $^{252}$No and $^{254}$No. The present results provide a microscopic solution to the long-standing puzzle on the rotational behavior in No isotopes, and highlight the risk of investigating only the hexacontetrapole ($\beta_{60}$) deformation effects in rotating transfermium nuclei without considering the octupole deformation.