Gamow-Teller transitions from 58Ni to discrete states of 51Cu -: The study of isospin symmetry in atomic nuclei

Under the assumption that isospin is a good quantum number, symmetry is expected for the transitions from the ground states of T = 1, T-z = +/-1 nuclei to the common excited states of the T-z = 0 nucleus situated between the two nuclei. The symmetry can be studied by comparing the strengths of Gamow-Teller (GT) transitions obtained from a (p, n)-type charge-exchange reaction on a target nucleus with T-z = 1 with those from the beta-decay of the T-z = -1 nucleus. The A = 58 system is the heaviest for which such a comparison is possible. As a part of the symmetry study, we measured the GT transitions from Ni-58 (T-z = 1) to Cu-58 (T-z = 0) by using the zero-degree (He-3,t) reaction at 150 MeV/nucleon. With the achieved resolution of 50 keV, many hitherto unresolved GT states have been identified. The GT transition strengths were obtained for states up to 8 MeV excitation, i.e., Dear to the Q window limitation (Q(EC) = 9.37 MeV) of the beta-decay from Zn-58 (T-z = -1) to Cu-58. The strength distribution is compared with that from shell-model calculations.