Effects of orbital occupancies and spin–orbit partners II: image decays of 76Ge, 82Se and 136Xe to first excited image states

The neutrinoless double beta (image) decays of 76Ge, 82Se and 136Xe to the first excited image states (image) in 76Se, 82Kr and 136Ba are studied in calculations using different sizes of the single-particle model spaces and different occupancies of the individual orbits. This is a continuation of a similar study [J. Suhonen, O. Civitarese, Effects of orbital occupancies and spin–orbit partners on image-decay rates, Nucl. Phys. A 847 (2010) 207–232] of the image decays of 76Ge, 82Se, 128Te, 130Te and 136Xe to the ground states of 76Se, 82Kr, 128Xe, 130Xe and 136Ba. The nuclear matrix elements and half-lives of the decays to the image states are calculated by the use of the multiple-commutator model with effective, G-matrix-derived nuclear forces. Interestingly, the basic features of the ground-state and excited-state decays are found to be quite different. The half-lives of the excited-state transitions are suppressed by at least one order of magnitude relative to the ground-state transitions.