NEW VISTAS OF EXOTIC HEAVY-NUCLEI

We report studies of examples of reflection-asymmetric nuclei which ar e difficult to access using compound nucleus reactions. The most octup ole deformed nuclei should be uranium isotopes with N approximate to 1 32; preliminary measurements of these very fissile nuclei suggest that they are within reach of current spectroscopic techniques. The octupo le radium isotopes with N > 132 and radon isotopes are not accessible by reactions employing stable targets and beams; we have shown that mu ltinucleon transfer reactions can populate these nuclei with sufficien t yield for their structure to be determined. We report high spin stud ies in Rn-218,Rn-220,Rn-222 and Ra-222,Ra-224,Ra-226 which reveal upbe nding effects in this mass region for the first time and show that the electric dipole moment is constant with spin.