Study of shape coexistence in the 188Hg isotope

Shape coexistence is a striking phenomenon that has attracted a large community and has been evidenced in many nuclear species where structures belonging to different deformations are observed coexisting within a typical energy range of nuclear excitation. Along the Z=80 isotopic chain, the 188Hg nucleus is the border-line where the presence of this phenomenon is foreseen but has not been confirmed yet. For this reason, this nucleus has been studied in a two-steps experiment performed at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro in order to measure the lifetimes of the low-lying states of the 188Hg