High-spin states in 157 Yb have been populated in the 144 Sm( 16 O, 3n) 157 Yb fusion-evaporation reaction at a beam energy of 85 MeV, and two rotational bands have been established for the first time. Within the framework of the triaxial particle-rotor model, the energy spectra and single-particle configurations of 157 Yb are investigated. The calculated energy spectra agree well with the experimental data. The newly observed ν f 7/2 band, and the previously known ν i 13/2 band in 157 Yb, are also discussed by means of Total-Routhian-Surface methods. The structural characters observed in 157 Yb provide evidence for the shape coexistence of three distinct shapes: prolate, triaxial and oblate. At higher spins, both the ν f 7/2 band and the ν i 13/2 band in 157 Yb undergo a shape evolution with sizable alignments occurring.
Regular tetrahedra have been demonstrated recently giving high packing density in random configurations. However, it is unknown whether the random-packing density of tetrahedral particles with other shapes can reach an even higher value. A numerical investigation on the random packing of regular and irregular tetrahedral particles is carried out. Shape effects of rounded corner, eccentricity, and height on the packing density of tetrahedral particles are studied. Results show that altering the shape of tetrahedral particles by rounding corners and edges, by altering the height of one vertex, or by lateral displacement of one vertex above its opposite face, all individually have the effect of reducing the random-packing density. In general, the random-packing densities of irregular tetrahedral particles are lower than that of regular tetrahedra. The ideal regular tetrahedron should be the shape which has the highest random-packing density in the family of tetrahedra, or even among convex bodies. An empirical formula is proposed to describe the rounded corner effect on the packing density, and well explains the density deviation of tetrahedral particles with different roundness ratios. The particles in the simulations are verified to be randomly packed by studying the pair correlation functions, which are consistent with previous results. The spherotetrahedral particle model with the relaxation algorithm is effectively applied in the simulations.
Full shell-model diagonalization has been performed to study the structure of neutron-rich nuclei around 20C. We investigate in detail the roles played by the different monopole components of the effective interaction in the evolution of the N = 14 shell in C, N and O isotopes. It is found that the relevant neutron–neutron monopole terms, V d 5 / 2 d 5 / 2 n n and V s 1 / 2 s 1 / 2 n n , contribute significantly to the reduction of the N = 14 shell gap in C and N isotopes in comparison with that in O isotopes. The origin of this unexpectedly large effect, which is comparable with (sometimes even larger than) that caused by the proton–neutron interaction, is related to the enhanced configuration mixing in those nuclei due to many-body correlations. Such a scheme is also supported by the large B ( E 2 ) value in the nucleus 20C which has been measured recently.