Paper detail

Revisiting the nuclear island of negative hexadecapole deformations in A$\approx$180 mass region: focusing on moments of inertia and quadrupole-hexadecapole coupling

For even-even nuclei $^{180-184}$Yb, $^{182-186}$Hf and $^{184-188}$W located on an island of hexadecapole-deformation archipelago, the structure properties, especially under rotation, are reinvestigated by using the Hartree-Fock-Bogliubov-Cranking (HFBC) calculation with a fixed shape (e.g., the ground-state equilibrium shape). The equilibrium deformations, extracted from the potential energy surface, are calculated based on the phenomenological Woods-Saxon mean-field Hamiltonian within the framework of macroscopic-microscopic (MM) model. The impact of different deformation degrees of freedom on, e.g., single-particle levels, total energy, and moment of inertia, is revealed, especially concentrating on the hexadecapole-deformation effects and the quadrupole-hexadecapole coupling. Considering the axially hexadecapole deformation, the present calculations can well reproduce available experimental data, including the quadrupole deformations and moments of inertia. Interestingly, it is found that the impact of different deformation degrees of freedom on moment of inertia exhibits a similar trend in the HFBC and rigid-body calculations though the latter ignores the pairing effects. Before starting or constructing a complex theory-model, to some extent, such a similarity can provide an alternative way of understanding the effect of, e.g., exotic deformations, on moment of inertia by the calculation of a simple rigid-body approximation. The present findings could offer insights into the static and dynamic effects of hexadecapole deformations, contributing valuable information for the corresponding research in nuclear structure and reaction.