Measurement of the electric quadrupole moment of the 482 keV state of 181Ta by the time differential perturbed angular correlation technique

The electric quadrupole interaction of the 482 keV state of ¹⁸¹Ta in an environment of metallic rhenium has been investigated by time differential angular correlation measurements. For the field gradient calibration a recent observation^{1, 2}) of the quadrupole splitting of the 6.3 keV line of ¹⁸¹Tain the same environment has been used. Adopting the quadrupole moment of the ground state which was derived from muonic X-ray data ³) we obtain $\text{Q}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>5</mtext><mtext>2</mtext>}}\text{(482}\text{keV}\text{) = 2.51 ± 0.15}\text{b}$. A comparison of the intrinsic quadrupole moment Q₀ with that of the ground state revealed that the excited state is slightly less deformed: $\text{Q}{}_0\text{(}\text{5}\text{2}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{)/Q}{}_0\text{(}\text{7}\text{2}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{) = 0.936 ± 0.014}$. A measurement of the temperature dependence between liquid nitrogen and room temperature showed that the electric quadrupole interaction remains essentially constant.