Background: The lead region, Po, Pb, Hg, and Pt, shows up the presence of
coexisting structures having different deformation and corresponding to
different particle-hole configurations in the Shell Model language.
Purpose: We intend to study the importance of configuration mixing in the
understanding of the nuclear structure of even-even Po isotopes, where the
shape coexistence phenomena are not clear enough.
Method: We study in detail a long chain of polonium isotopes, 190-208Po,
using the interacting boson model with configuration mixing (IBM-CM). We fix
the parameters of the Hamiltonians through a least-squares fit to the known
energies and absolute B(E2) transition rates of states up to 3 MeV.
Results: We obtained the IBM-CM Hamiltonians and we calculate excitation
energies, B(E2)'s, electric quadrupole moments, nuclear radii and isotopic
shifts, quadrupole shape invariants, wave functions, and deformations.
Conclusions: We obtain a good agreement with the experimental data for all
the studied observables and we conclude that shape coexistence phenomenon is
hidden in Po isotopes, very much as in the case of the Pt isotopes.