Chaos and isospin symmetry breaking in rotational nuclei

Abstract For nuclei with N ≈ Z , the isospin degree of freedom is important and, for deformed systems, rotational bands of different isospin may be expected at low excitation energies. We have investigated, in a simple model space, the influence of the isospin-breaking Coulomb interaction on the degree of chaoticity of these rotational bands. The statistical measures used rely on an analysis of level-spacing distributions, which are extremely difficult to measure experimentally. We show, however, that the overlap integrals between states of similar frequency reflect well the degree of chaoticity. This quantity is closely related to the experimentally more accessible γ -decay “spreading width”.