Monopole-driven shell evolution below the doubly magic nucleus 132Sn explored with the long-lived isomer in 126Pd

A new isomer with a half-life of 23.0(8) ms has been identified at 2406 keV in (126)Pd and is proposed to have a spin and parity of 10(+) with a maximally aligned configuration comprising two neutron holes in the 1h(11/2) orbit. In addition to an internal-decay branch through a hindered electric octupole transition, β decay from the long-lived isomer was observed to populate excited states at high spins in (126)Ag. The smaller energy difference between the 10(+) and 7(-) isomers in (126)Pd than in the heavier N=80 isotones can be interpreted as being ascribed to the monopole shift of the 1h(11/2) neutron orbit. The effects of the monopole interaction on the evolution of single-neutron energies below (132)Sn are discussed in terms of the central and tensor forces.