Moments of inertia and shape evolution in A \(\simeq \) 120–130 Xe, Ba and Ce nuclei

We introduce a variant of wood’s method to calculate the empirical moments of inertia \({\mathfrak {I}_1}\), \({\mathfrak {I}_2}\) and \({\mathfrak {I}_3}\) in the framework of the general triaxial rotor model. The present approach is based (only) on the experimental data about the energy of the low-lying levels and no electromagnetic transition data are necessary. We applied this method to the transitional atomic nuclei \(^{128{-}134}Ce\), \(^{124{-}132}Ba\) and \(^{122{-}130}Xe\), the results suggested a variety of shapes in these nuclei. In order to make an accurate analysis of these shapes we investigate the structure of the previous nuclei using the staggering, the gamma - ground state band energy differences and microscopic calculations within the HF+BCS theory.