Dr Gregory Lane
ARC Future Fellow
Nuclear Physics Department

Deformed nuclei are well known to exhibit isomers whose long lifetimes are caused by the fact that the only available isomeric decay transitions violate conservation of the K quantum number, where K is the projection of the angular momentum on the nuclear symmetry axis. The present work is part of an ongoing program using gamma-ray spectroscopy and deep inelastic reactions to investigate the prevalence and structure of K-isomers in neutron-rich A=170 to A=190 nuclei, with a more recent focus on the heavier transitional region where the nuclear quadrupole deformation begins to decrease and the effects of increasing hexadecapole deformation and the loss of axial symmetry may begin to play an important role (see, for example, Lane et al, PRC 82 (2010) 051304(R), Dracoulis et al, PLB 709 (2012) 59 and references therein).

This presentation will focus on the most neutron-rich tungsten nuclei that have been studied at high-spin, up to 4 neutrons beyond the heaviest stable isotope, ¹⁸⁶W. A complex picture of changing configurations and transition strengths has emerged that illuminates aspects of both K conservation and the trends in deformation.