Observation of an intense quasicontinuum of superdeformed rotational transitions in Eu-143

Quasicontinuum spectra in coincidence with transitions belonging to the different potential wells of 143Eu are studied with increasing number of coincidence folds. An intense bump of rotationally correlated transitions is observed to develop in the high spin region. Fold distributions, angular anisotropies, moment of inertia determinations, and lower limits of lifetimes as function of the rotational frequency show that the bump originates from highly collective rotationally damped E2 transitions generated by superdeformed states.