A ridge has been found in a 7-7 coincidence matriz obtained from the reaction 122Sn (27 A1,5n)144Eu at 142 MeV. The half-width of the valley is ~59 keV, which is similar to the energy spacings in the superdeformed bands in 143Eu and 142Sm. This indicates She ezistence of superdeformed bands in 144Eu. 27.60.+j, 23.20.Lv, 21.10.Re, 21.60.Ev Superdeformed bands have recently been observed in the N = 80 nuclei 143Eu [1, 2] and 14~Sm [3]. These two cases lie intermediate between the "highly" deformed A = 135 region and the heavier region centred around A = 150 where nuclei with a superdeformed 2:1 shape are found. The observation of these bands agrees well with Total Routhian Surface (TRS) calculations, which predict N = 80 to be a particularly favoured neutron number. A glaring problem is the failure by many groups to observe superdeformation in the next N = 80 isotone, 144Gd, which is predicted to be a more favourable case than 142Sm. Theory also predicts that the energy spacing may not be regular in 144Gd, and this may account, at least in part, for the null results in 144Gd. It is clearly pertinent to ask whether or not superdeformed bands exist only in nuclei with N = 80 in this "bridging" region. This note reports on our findings in the odd-odd neighbour to 143Eu, 144Eu.
PACS:A beam of 2rA1 ions was provided at an energy of 142 MeV by the upgraded MP tandem accelerator of the TASCC facility at the Chalk River Laboratories of AECL Research. The target consisted of two --~500#g/cm ~ foils enriched to ~98% in 122Sn. States in 144Eu were reached via the 5n exit channel in which the entry conditions were suitable for populating superdeformed bands. 7-7 coincidences were collected with the 87r spectrometer, which comprises twenty Compton suppressed HpGe detectors, and a seventy-one element BGO inner calorimeter from which fold/sum-energy (K/H) information was obtained. The data were written event-by-event onto magnetic tape for subsequent analysis. Finally, 152Eu and 133Ba sources were placed at the target position for the purpose of energy and relative efficiency calibration of the HpGe detectors.In the replay of the data, the BGO-ball was used to select events that had a minimum sum-energy of H > 19.6 MeV. This matrix contained 280 million events, in which 144Eu was approximately 2.5 times stronger than either 143Eu or 145Eu. The matrix was symmetrized and searched for superdeformed bands with established techniques. No evidence could be found for the superdeformed band in ~43Eu. A weak 2-dimensional ridge was observed in this matrix. A 1-dimensional projection taken from a background-subtracted matrix perpendicular to the diagonal over the energy range 950-to-1350 keV is shown in figure 1. Contributions from contaminating discrete-line coincidences have been excluded by examination of the total projection of the data parallel to the diagonal. The half-width of the valley is ~59 keV, and remains constant at this value to within -4-2 keV over the entire length of the ridge. This is similar to the spacing...