Coulomb excitation of 96Mo

The neutron-rich strontium, zirconium and molybdenum nuclei have been observed to undergo a dramatic evolution, becoming strongly deformed around N = 60, sometimes interpreted as a quantum phase transition between “normal” and intruder configurations. Key to understanding this evolution is to understand the configurations in isolation, in regions where interference can be neglected. A deformed coexisting configuration is inferred from the presence of a $0$$^{+}_{2}$ state which decreases in excitation energy with increasing neutron number, becoming the first-excited state at 98Mo. We present here the results of a low-energy Coulomb-excitation measurement of the nucleus 96Mo, extracting B(E2) values and quadrupole moments. It is found that, while the B(E2) values agree with those found in the literature, there is a significant disagreement with literature spectroscopic quadrupole moments. The results are compared with shell-model calculations using a 88Sr core with good agreement found, likely indicating that intruder structures do not significantly impact the ground-state structure, in contrast with the heavier molybdenum isotopes.