Nuclear structure with clusters and covalent valence neutrons Original Research Article

Recent studies of excited states in light nuclei with neutron excess showing extreme deformations like super- or hyper-deformation are discussed. The structure of these states is related to nuclear clustering, to combinations of clusters of different size with valence neutrons in covalent binding orbits, which stabilise the unstable cluster states. Octupole deformations related to instrinsically asymmetric cluster configurations appear, these give rise to rotational bands as parity (inversion) doublets. Data with the observation of inversion doublets and of molecular structure in isotopes of Be, C and Ne are shown.