Shears band with a large dynamic moment of inertia in 197Bi

High-spin states in 197Bi were studied with the AFRODITE γ-ray array at iThemba LABS using the 181Ta( 22Ne, 6n) reaction at a beam energy of 125 MeV. A new shears band was found and linked to the low-lying states in 197Bi. Its dynamic moment of inertia, \( \Im^{{(2)}}_{}\), is considerably larger than the \( \Im^{{(2)}}_{}\) of the shears bands in the neighbouring Pb isotopes. This is probably a result of the involvement of an additional high-K h9/2 proton orbital.