Coexistence of normal, super-, and hyper-deformation in nuclei: A study with angular momentum projection method

Angular-momentum-projected energy surface calculations for A ≈ 110 nuclei indicate three distinct energy minima occurring at different angular-momenta. These correspond to normal, super-, and hyper- deformed shapes coexisting in one nucleus. 110Pd is studied in detail, with a quantitative prediction on super- and hyper-deformed spectra by the Projected Shell Model calculation. It is found that several other neighboring nuclei in the A-110 mass region, with the neutron number around 64, also exhibit clear super- and hyper-deformation minima in the projected calculation. Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2007CB815005) and National Science Foundation of U.S. (Grant No. PHY-0216783) (Y.S.), Department of Energy of U.S. (Grant No. DE-FG02-96ER40983) (J.-Y.Z.), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10325521) (G.L.L.)