  The behaviour of the i13/2 and h9/2 single-neutron strength was studied with
the (4He,3He) reaction on 138Ba, 140Ce, 142Nd and 144Sm targets at a beam
energy of 51 MeV. The separation between the single-neutron states i13/2 and
h9/2 was measured in N =83 nuclei with changing proton number. To this end
spectroscopic factors for states populated in high-l transfer were extracted
from the data. Some mixing of l=5 and 6 strength was observed with states that
are formed by coupling the f7/2 state to the 2+ and 3- vibrational states and
the mixing matrix elements were found to be remarkably constant. The centroids
of the strength indicate a systematic change in the energies of the i13/2 and
h9/2 single-neutron states with increasing proton number that is in
quantitative agreement with the effects expected from the tensor interaction.
