The breaking of intrinsic reflection symmetry in nuclear ground states

Negative-parity excited states of doubly even nuclei have earlier been attributed to vibrational excitations. This paper shows that an interpretation starting from a reflection asymmetric intrinsic state is more appropriate for certain nuclei in the radium region. Theoretical evidence for stable octupole deformation comes from a deformed shell-model calculation in which we use a single-particle potential with a realistic radial shape and a finite-range interaction for the surface energy. The octupole effect systematically improves the agreement between theoretical and experimental masses. The low-lying O⁺ excitations observed in experiment are compatible with the calculated collective octupole potentials. The possibility of obtaining further evidence from the spectroscopy of odd-mass nuclei is considered in an exactly solvable model, which shows that the smaller energy splitting observed in odd-A parity doublets mainly reflects single-particle fragmentation of the collective mode. The systematics of theoretical shell structure and experimental spectroscopy suggests the presence of other regions of octupole collectivity near the limits of stability.