PT Journal
AU Valiente-Dobon, JJea
   Gadea, A
   Algora, A
TI Manifestation of the Berry phase in the atomic nucleus Pb-213
SO Physics Letters B
JI Phys. Lett. B
PY 2021
BP 136183
EP 5pp
VL 816
DI 10.1016/j.physletb.2021.136183
LA English
AB The neutron-rich Pb-213 isotope was produced in the fragmentation of a primary 1 GeV A U-238 beam, separated in FRS in mass and atomic number, and then implanted for isomer decay gamma-ray spectroscopy with the RISING setup at GSI. A newly observed isomer and its measured decay properties indicate that states in Pb-213 are characterized by the seniority quantum number that counts the nucleons not in pairs coupled to angular momentum J = 0. The conservation of seniority is a consequence of a geometric phase associated with particle-hole conjugation, which becomes observable in semi-magic nuclei where nucleons half-fill the valence shell. The gamma-ray spectroscopic observables in Pb-213 are thus found to be driven by two mechanisms, particle-hole conjugation and seniority conservation, which are intertwined through a Berry phase.
ER