2026/07/17 by E. B. Balbutsev, I. V. Molodtsova
#nucl-th
Recently, low-energy dipole excitations in 166Er were investigated via nuclear resonance fluorescence [T. Shizuma \it et al, Phys. Rev. C \bf 113, 044325 (2026)]. The magnetic dipole strength associated with the nuclear scissors mode was extracted for excitation energies between 2.2 and 3.5 MeV. It was found that the M1 strength distribution is separated into two groups. We interpret this splitting as caused by the spin degrees of freedom instead of the nucleus nonaxiality suggested by authors.