Electric and Magnetic Dipole Strength in ^58ni from Forward-Angle Inelastic Proton Scattering

The aim of the present work is a state-by-state analysis of possible E1 and M1 transitions in ^58Ni with a high-resolution (p,p') experiment at 295 MeV and very forward angles including 0 and a comparison to results from studies of the dipole strength with the (γ,γ') and (e,e') reactions. The E1 and M1 cross sections of individual peaks in the spectra are deduced with a multipole decomposition analysis and converted to reduced E1 and spin-M1 transition strengths using the virtual photon and the unit cross-section method, respectively. Despite the high level density good agreement is obtained for the deduced excitation energies of J = 1 states in the three types of experiments indicating that the same states are excited. The B(E1) and B(M1) strengths from the (γ,γ^') experiments are systematically smaller than in the present work because of the lack of information on branching ratios to lower-lying excited states and the competition of particle emission. Fair agreement with the B(M1) strengths extracted from the (e,e') data is obtained after removal of E1 transitions uniquely assigned in the present work, which belong to a low-energy toroidal mode with unusual properties mimicking M1 excitations in electron scattering. The experimental M1 strength distribution is compared to large-scale shell-model calculations with the effective GXPF1A and KB3G interactions. They provide a good description of the isospin splitting and the running sum of the M1 strength. A quenching factor 0.74 for the spin-isospin part of the M1 operator is needed to attain quantitative agreement with the data.