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Mass spectrometry of Zn75 ground and isomeric states from in-trap decay of Cu75

M. Müller1,*, N. A. Althubiti2,3, D. Atanasov1,†, K. Blaum1, R. B. Cakirli1, T. E. Cocolios4, F. Herfurth5, S. Kreim1, D. Lunney6,‡ et al.

V. Manea1,7,§, N. Minkov1,8, D. Neidherr5, M. Rosenbusch9,∥, L. Schweikhard9, A. Welker7,10, F. Wienholtz7,9,¶, and R. N. Wolf1,**

  • *Contact author: marius.mueller@mpi-hd.mpg.de
  • †Present address: Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK CEN, Mol, Belgium.
  • ‡Present address: CNRS-TRIUMF International Research Laboratory for Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Astrophysics and Accelerator Technology, Vancouver, Canada.
  • §Present address: Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, 91405 Orsay, France.
  • ∥Present address: RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based science, 351-0198 Wako, Saitama, Japan.
  • Present address: Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany.
  • **Present address: School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
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Phys. Rev. C 113, 044321 – Published 27 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wj4z-r1vq

Abstract

We report on high-precision mass measurements of the ground and first isomeric state of Zn75, performed using the time-of-flight ion-cyclotron-resonance technique at the ISOLTRAP Penning-trap mass spectrometer at ISOLDE/CERN. The isomeric state was produced using in-trap decay of Cu75. This marks the first direct investigation of the isomeric state of Zn75 via mass spectrometry. The isomer was observed at an excitation energy of 123.7(20)keV, in 2σ agreement with the value previously determined through decay spectroscopy. In addition, our measurements correct a misassignment of the ground-state mass excess based on a previous measurement by Baruah et al., revising the value to −62681.0(21)keV. To further investigate the earlier discrepancy, we explored the spin-parity assignments of the ground and isomeric states in Zn75 using Skyrme Hartree-Fock plus Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theoretical calculations, given the absence of definitive experimental data. In light of the laser spectroscopy results from Wraith et al., our results add strong evidence for a spin-1/2 ground state, which would agree with large-scale shell-model predictions as well as explaining disagreements with the Monte Carlo shell model.

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Phys. Rev. C 113, 044321– Published 27 April, 2026
  • Received 9 January 2026
  • Accepted 10 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

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