TEST OF TETRAHEDRAL SYMMETRY FOR HEAVY AND SUPERHEAVY NUCLEI

Abstract

In the recent years an interesting suggestion has been made that nucleus, like many other quantum objects, can have tetrahedral shape at the ground state. We test this hypothesis within the macroscopic-microscopic method, by using a 12 dimensional manifold of shapes, including: axial, nonaxial and reflection-asymmetric ones. We systematically calculate potential energy surfaces for even-even heavy and superheavy nuclei in the range of proton numbers 82 ≤ Z ≤ 128 and neutron numbers 98 ≤ N ≤ 194. We find that in the whole region of the investigated superheavy nuclei, tetrahedral symmetry does not play a significant role at the ground state.