High-spin structure of ¹³⁴Xe

Detailed spectroscopic information on the N ∼ 82 nuclei is necessary to benchmark shell-model calculations in the region. The nuclear structure above long-lived isomers in ¹³⁴Xe is investigated after multinucleon transfer (MNT) and actinide fission. Xenon-134 was populated as (i) a transfer product in ¹³⁶Xe+²³⁸U and ¹³⁶Xe+²⁰⁸Pb MNT reactions and (ii) as a fission product in the ¹³⁶Xe+²³⁸U reaction employing the high-resolution Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA). Trajectory reconstruction has been applied for the complete identification of beamlike transfer products with the magnetic spectrometer PRISMA. The ¹³⁶Xe+¹⁹⁸Pt MNT reaction was studied with the γ-ray spectrometer GAMMASPHERE in combination with the gas detector array Compact Heavy Ion Counter (CHICO). Several high-spin states in ¹³⁴Xe on top of the two long-lived isomers are discovered based on γγ-coincidence relationships and information on the γ-ray angular distributions as well as excitation energies from the total kinetic energy loss and fission fragments. The revised level scheme of ¹³⁴Xe is extended up to an excitation energy of 5.832 MeV with tentative spin-parity assignments up to 16⁺. Previous assignments of states above the 7⁻ isomer are revised. Latest shell-model calculations employing two different effective interactions reproduce the experimental findings and support the new spin and parity assignments.