Evidence for coexisting shapes through lifetime measurements in 98Zr

The lifetimes of the first excited 2þ, 4þ, and 6þ states in 98Zr were measured with the recoil-distance Doppler shift method in an experiment performed at GANIL. Excited states in 98Zr were populated using the fission reaction between a 6.2 MeV=u 238U beam and a 9 Be target. The γ rays were detected with the EXOGAM array in correlation with the fission fragments identified by mass and atomic number in the VAMOS++ spectrometer. Our result shows a very small BðE2; 2þ 1 → 0þ 1 Þ value in 98Zr, thereby confirming the very sudden onset of collectivity at N ¼ 60. The experimental results are compared to large-scale Monte Carlo shell model and beyond-mean-field calculations. The present results indicate the coexistence of two additional deformed shapes in this nucleus along with the spherical ground state.