Empirical investigation of extreme single-particle behavior of nuclear quadrupole moments in highly collective A∼150 superdeformed bands -: art. no. 172503

The intrinsic quadrupole moment Q(0) of superdeformed rotational bands in A similar to 150 nuclei depends on the associated single-particle configuration. We have derived an empirical formula based on the additivity of effective quadrupole moments of single-particle orbitals that describes existing measurements from Sm-142 to Dy-152. To further test the formula, the predicted Q(0) moments for two superdeformed bands in Gd-146 of 14.05 eb were confronted with a new measurement yielding 13.9 +/- 0.4 eb and 0.9 +/- 0.3 eb, respectively. This excellent agreement provides empirical evidence of extreme single-particle behavior in highly deformed, collective systems.