Coulomb excitation of 168Er

The nucleus 168Er has been Coulomb excited using beams of 40Ca, 58Ni and 208Pb. In addition lifetimes of eight states have been measured by the recoil distance method. About 50 E2 matrix elements in the ground and gamma rotational bands have been determined. The ground-band E2 matrix elements follow the predictions of a quadrupole-deformed rotor model. In the gamma band the measured E2 matrix elements exhibit a reduction of collectivity above spin 6.