Spectroscopy of the odd-odd fp-shell nucleus ⁵²Sc from secondary fragmentation

The odd-odd fp-shell nucleus ⁵²Sc was investigated using in-beam γ-ray spectroscopy following secondary fragmentation of a ⁵⁵V and ⁵⁷Cr cocktail beam. Aside from the known γ-ray transition at 674(5) keV, a new decay at E_γ=212(3) keV was observed. It is attributed to the depopulation of a low-lying excited level. This new state is discussed in the framework of shell-model calculations with the GXPF1, GXPF1A, and KB3G effective interactions. These calculations are found to be fairly robust for the low-lying level scheme of ⁵²Sc irrespective of the choice of the effective interaction. In addition, the frequency of spin values predicted by the shell model is successfully modeled by a spin distribution formulated in a statistical approach with an empirical, energy-independent spin-cutoff parameter.