Lifetime Measurements in $^{162}$Dy

Historically, the rare-earth region of nuclei has been a fountainhead for nuclear structure phenomena. One of the more debated structure effects is the nature of excited 0+ bands in nuclei, and continues to be an outstanding challenge in nuclear structure physics; several interpretations exist, and we hope that lifetime measurements can help distinguish between them. $^{162}$Dy has an abundance of 0+ states with limited lifetime data; we have measured excitation functions, mean lifetimes, and angular distributions of gamma rays for excited states in $^{162}$Dy at the University of Kentucky Accelerator Laboratory. Low lying excited states were populated up to an excitation energy of E $<$ 3.2 MeV, where we will discuss the implications of the lifetimes under this energy threshold. This work was supported by the NSF under contract numbers PHY-1068192, PHY-1205412, and PHY-0956310.