Beyond band termination in Er-157 and the search for wobbling excitations in strongly deformed Hf-174

High-spin terminating bands in heavy nuclei were first identified in nuclei around Er-158(90). While examples of special terminating states have been identified in a number of erbium isotopes, almost nothing is known about the states lying beyond band termination. In the present work the high-spin structure of Er-157 has been studied using the Gammasphere spectrometer. The subject of triaxial superdeformation and 'wobbling' modes in Lu nuclei has rightly attracted a great deal of attention. Very recently, four strongly or superdeformed (SD) sequences have been observed in Hf-174 and ultimate cranker calculations predict, such structures may have significant triaxial deformation. We have performed two experiments in an attempt to verify the possible triaxial nature of these bands. A lifetime measurement was performed to confirm the large (and similar) deformation of the bands. In addition, a high-statistics, thin-target experiment was run to search for linking transitions between the SD bands and possible wobbling modes.