Electric-dipole transitions in 165Er

High-spin states of 165Er were studied using the 160Gd(9Be, 4n)reaction at beam energies of 42 and 45 MeV. The previously known bands based on the ν5/2-[523] and ν5/2+[642] configurations have been extended to high-spin states. Electric-dipole transitions linking these two opposite parity bands were observed. Relatively large B(E1) values have been extracted experimentally and were attributed to octupole softness.