ROLE OF THE NON-AXIAL OCTUPOLE DEFORMATION IN THE POTENTIAL ENERGY OF HEAVY NUCLEI

Role of the non-axial octupole deformation a(32)(Y-32 + Y3-2) on the potential energy of heavy nuclei is studied in a large deformation space. The study is performed within a macroscopic-microscopic approach. A large region of nuclei with proton number 88 <= Z <= 112 and neutron number 128 <= N <= 156 is considered. It is found that while the a(32) deformation alone lowers the energy of the nuclei by up to about 3 MeV (for nuclei around Fm-238), it has practically no effect on the global energy minima of considered nuclei, when the analysis is done in a large space.