The semi-magic nuclei 138 Ba, 140 Ce, and 144 Sm have been investigated in photon scattering experiments up to an excitation energy of about 10 MeV. The distribution of the electric dipole strength shows a resonance like structure at energies between 5.5 and 8 MeV exhausting up to 1 % of the isovector E1 Energy Weighted Sum Rule.

High precision angular distribution data of (α,α) A systematic fitting procedure was applied to the presented experimental scattering data to obtain comprehensive local potential parameter sets which are composed of a real folding potential and an imaginary potential of Woods-Saxon surface type. The obtained potential parameters were used in turn to construct a new systematic α-nucleus potential with very few parameters.Although this new potential cannot reproduce the angular distributions with the same small deviations as the local potential, the new potential is able to predict the total reaction cross sections for all cases under study.