Normal and intruder configurations in Si 34 populated in the β- Decay of Mg 34 and Al 34

The structure of Si34 was studied through γ spectroscopy separately in the β- decays of Mg34 and Al34 at the ISOLDE facility of CERN. Different configurations in Si34 were populated independently from the two recently identified β-decaying states in Al34 having spin-parity assignments Jπ=4- dominated by the normal configuration π(d5/2)-1 - ν(f7/2) and Jπ=1+ by the intruder configuration π(d5/2)-1 - ν(d3/2)-1(f7/2)2. The paper reports on spectroscopic properties of Si34 such as an extended level scheme, spin and parity assignments based on log(ft) values and γ-ray branching ratios, absolute β feeding intensities, and neutron emission probabilities. A total of 11 newly identified levels and 26 transitions were added to the previously known level scheme of Si34. Large scale shell-model calculations using the SDPF-U-MIX interaction, able to treat higher order intruder configurations, are compared with the new results and conclusions are drawn concerning the predictive power of SDPF-U-MIX, the N=20 shell gap, the level of mixing between normal and intruder configurations for the 01+, 02+, and 21+ states, and the absence of triaxial deformation in Si34.