Evolution of Octupole Deformation in Radium Nuclei from Coulomb Excitation of Radioactive ^{222}Ra and ^{228}Ra Beams
There is sparse direct experimental evidence that atomic nuclei can exhibit stable "pear" shapes arising from strong octupole correlations. In order to investigate the nature of octupole collectivity in radium isotopes, electric octupole (E3) matrix elements have been determined for transitions in ^{222,228}Ra nuclei using the method of sub-barrier, multistep Coulomb excitation. Beams of the radio