High-Spin Structure in Er-157 Up to and above Band Termination

The high-spin structure of Er-157 has been greatly expanded using the Gammasphere spectrometer to investigate the Cd-114(Ca-48,5n) reaction at 215 MeV. Many new transitions have been placed in a greatly augmented level scheme up to spin 40h with many collective rotational sequences established. With increasing angular momentum, this nucleus undergoes a Coriolis-induced shape transition from a deformed state of collective rotation to a noncollective configuration. This transition manifests itself as favored band termination near I=45h in three rotational structures. Many weakly populated states lying at high excitation energy that decay into the terminating states have been discovered. Cranked-Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations suggest that the levels that feed the terminating states arise from weakly collective configurations that break the Z=64 semimagic core.