Single-particle configurations of low- and medium-spin states in 63Cu

The excitation scheme of the 63Cu nucleus has been probed following its population in a light-ion induced fusion-evaporation reaction and using an array of Compton suppressed HPGe clover detectors as the detection system. Apart from ascribing gamma-ray transitions to the level scheme of the nucleus, through gamma -gamma coincidence measurements, and identifying the new transitions in the process, measurements of angular correlation and linear polarization of the gamma rays have also been carried out towards assigning their multipolarities and electric and magnetic characters. The observed level scheme has been interpreted through shell model calculations in two different model spaces. One of these was the f 5pg9 space outside the 56Ni core while the other included the f7/2 orbital for the protons outside the 48Ca core and was directed at probing the influence of the f7/2 excitations in the regime of spins being investigated. The latter has been found to be of rather modest impact, in general, and the observed level structure can largely be interpreted through particle excitations in the f 5pg9 model space.