Collective spectra of α-like giant trinuclear molecules -: art. no. 054308

The collective rotational-vibrational spectrum of a giant trinuclear molecule is computed for the case when the clusters which are composing this exotic nuclear system are spherical. Special attention is paid to the case of a triangular configuration which corresponds to an absolute minimum in the total ternary potential and in our view is a good candidate for a molecular configuration. Although the coupling between different included collective degrees of freedom looks rather complicated it is shown that by expanding the Hamiltonian operator around the equilibrium values and retaining only the first term a satisfactory approximation in building the molecular spectrum is obtained. For the sake of completeness we compare the above-mentioned molecular spectrum with that obtained in the case of the linear molecule. We consider as an application the splitting Sn-132+ alpha + Pd-116 which occurs in the alpha-accompanied ternary cold fission of Cf-252.