Structure Of Pu-240: Evidence For Octupole Phonon Condensation?

The expanded level structure of Pu-240 available from the present study highlights the role of strong octupole correlations in this nucleus. In addition to a delayed alignment in the yrast band, the observations include the presence of both I+->(I-1)(-) and I-->(I-1)(+)E1 transitions linking states of the yrast and negative-parity bands at high spin and the presence of an additional even-spin, positive-parity band deexciting exclusively to the negative-parity sequence. The observations appear to be consistent with expectations based on the recently proposed concept of octupole phonon condensation.