High-K isomers in 176W and mechanisms of K violation.

K-isomers are states in deformed nuclei whose {gamma}-decay is hindered by selection rules involving K, the projection of the angular momentum along the axis of symmetry of the nucleus. Previous work with the Argonne Notre Dame BGO Array delineated the existence of two K-isomers in {sup 176}W, one of which had a very unusual pattern of decay. A short description of this work was published as a letter, and a more complete account is being readied for submission. These results provided evidence that quantum-mechanical fluctuations in the nuclear shape may be responsible for some of the observed K-violating transitions. In addition, hints were present in the data of the existence of another K-isomer with an even higher in. An experiment was performed in September 1994 to observe this isomer, using the reaction {sup 50}Ti({sup 130}Te,4n), and a technique in which recoiling {sup 176}W nuclei were created 17-cm upstream of the center of the array and caught on a Pb catcher foil at the center. Intense ({approximately} 3 pnA) beams of {sup 130}Te were supplied by the ECR source using a new sputtering technique. The recoil-shadow geometry was highly successful at removing the background from non-isomeric decays, allowing the weakly populatedmore » K-isomers to be detected cleanly. In addition, the availability of pulsed beams from ATLAS and the timing data from the BGO array provided a second technique for isolating the decays of interest, by selecting events in which a given number of BGO detectors fired between beam pulses. This method was used in the previous experiment, and was also applied in this experiment as a second level of selection. As a result, gamma-ray transitions were detected in the present experiment with intensities as small as {approximately} 0.02 % of the {sup 176}W reaction channel. The existence of the new isomer was confirmed, and a partial level-scheme was constructed.« less