Competing Modes of Excitations and the Decay out of the Triaxial Strongly Deformed Well in Lu-167

An unexpected strong interaction between normal deformed and triaxial strongly deformed levels at high spin, similar to32h, is observed in Lu-167. This constitutes the first observation of accidental degeneracy, at such high spins, causing cross talk between levels in the normal deformed and in the second potential well in any known mass region. Furthermore, evidence of quasi-particle excitations highly competing with the wobbling excitation mode in a triaxial superdeformed well has been established in Lu-167.