Unfavoured signature partner superdeformed bands associated with proton excitations in 151Tb

Abstract Candidates for two excited superdeformed (SD) bands based on unfavoured signature partners of proton particle-hole excitations in the 152 Dy core have been observed in the 151 Tb nucleus with the EUROGAM spectrometer. In the framework of cranked shell model calculations, one of these bands is interpreted as the signature partner of the 151 Tb yrast band. It is suggested that the second band is either the signature partner of the 151 Tb first excited band with a proton π[301] 1 2 configuration or is an excitation from the π[303] 5 2 into the [651] 3 2 intruder orbitals. There is a disagreement between the data and the predictions of self-consistent relativistic Hartree-Fock calculations.