Investigation of Gamow–Teller strength of ¹⁸⁶Hg within deformed pn-QRPA

Recently, the total absorption gamma spectroscopy technique was used to determine the Gamow–Teller (GT) distribution of β-decay of 186Hg. It was concluded that the best description of the measured data was obtained with dominantly prolate components for both parent 186Hg and daughter 186Au. Motivated by the recent findings, we investigate the effect of nuclear deformation on the energy distribution of the GT strength of the decay of 186Hg into 186Au within the framework of proton–neutron quasiparticle random phase approximation (pn-QRPA) based on the deformed Nilsson potential. To do the needful, we first calculate the energy levels and shape prediction of 186Hg within the interacting boson model. The computed GT strength distribution satisfied the model-independent Ikeda sum rule 100% (99.98%) for the prolate (oblate) case. Based on the strength distributions, the deformed pn-QRPA model with separable interaction prefers a prolate shape for the ground state of 186Hg and supports the shape coexistence for this nucleus.