No Arabic abstract
While the 12C(a,g)16O reaction plays a central role in nuclear astrophysics, the cross section at energies relevant to hydrostatic helium burning is too small to be directly measured in the laboratory. The beta-delayed alpha spectrum of 16N can be used to constrain the extrapolation of the E1 component of the S-factor; however, with this approach the resulting S-factor becomes strongly correlated with the assumed beta-alpha branching ratio. We have remeasured the beta-alpha branching ratio by implanting 16N ions in a segmented Si detector and counting the number of beta-alpha decays relative to the number of implantations. Our result, 1.49(5)e-5, represents a 24% increase compared to the accepted value and implies an increase of 14% in the extrapolated S-factor.
In an experiment performed at the ISOLDE facility of CERN, the super-allowed beta-decay branching ratio of 10C was determined with a high-precision single-crystal germanium detector. In order to evaluate the contribution of the pile-up of two 511 keV gamma quanta to one of the gamma-ray peaks of interest at 1021.7 keV, data were not only taken with 10C, but also with a 19Ne beam. The final result for the super-allowed decay branch is 1.4638(50)%, in agreement with the average from literature.
Measurements of the beta-neutrino correlation coefficient (a$_{beta u}$) in nuclear beta decay, together with the Fierz interference term (b$_F$), provide a robust test for the existence of exotic interactions beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The extraction of these quantities from the recoil ion spectra in $beta$-decay requires accurate knowledge, decay branching ratios, and high-precision calculations of higher order nuclear effects. Here, we report on a new measurement of the $^{23}$Ne $beta$-decay branching ratio, which allows a reanalysis of existing high-precision measurements. Together with new theoretical calculations of nuclear structure effects, augmented with robust theoretical uncertainty, this measurement improves on the current knowledge of a$_{beta u}$ in $^{23}$Ne by an order of magnitude, and strongly constrains the Fierz term in beta decays, making this one of the first extractions to constrain both terms simultaneously. Together, these results place bounds on the existence of exotic tensor interactions and pave the way for new, even higher precision, experiments.
A high-precision branching ratio measurement for the superallowed Fermi $beta^{+}$ emitter $^{62}$Ga was performed with the Gamma-Ray Infrastructure for Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei (GRIFFIN) spectrometer at the Isotope Separator and Accelerator (ISAC) radioactive ion beam facility at TRIUMF. The high efficiency of the GRIFFIN spectrometer allowed 63 $gamma$-ray transitions, with intensities down to $approx$1 part per million (ppm) per $^{62}$Ga $beta^{+}$ decay, to be placed in the level scheme of the daughter nucleus $^{62}$Zn, establishing the superallowed $beta$ branching ratio for $^{62}$Ga decay to be 99.8577$^{+0.0023}_{-0.0029}%$, a factor of 4 more precise than the previous world average. For several cascades, $gamma-gamma$ angular correlation measurements were performed to assign spins and/or determine the mixing ratios of transitions. In particular, the spin of the 2.342 MeV excited state in the daughter nucleus $^{62}$Zn was definitively assigned as $J = 0$. This assignment resolves a discrepancy between previous measurements and has important implications for the isospin symmetry breaking correction, $delta_{C1}$, in $^{62}$Ga superallowed Fermi $beta$ decay.
We present the full description of a measurement of the branching ratios for the beta-decay of 38Ca. This decay includes five allowed 0+ --> 1+ branches and a superallowed 0+ --> 0+ one. With our new result for the latter, we determine its ft value to be 3062.3(68) s, a result whose precision (0.2%) is comparable to the precision of the thirteen well known 0+ --> 0+ transitions used up till now for the determination of Vud, the up-down quark-mixing element of the CKM matrix. The 38Ca superallowed transition thus becomes the first addition to this set of transitions in nearly a decade and the first for which a precise mirror comparison is possible, thus enabling an improved test of the isospin-symmetry-breaking corrections required for the extraction of Vud.
We have measured the beta-decay branching ratio for the transition from 21Na to the first excited state of 21Ne. A recently published test of the standard model, which was based on a measurement of the beta-nu correlation in the decay of 21Na, depended on this branching ratio. However, until now only relatively imprecise (and, in some cases, contradictory) values existed for it. Our new result, 4.74(4)%, reduces but does not remove the reported discrepancy with the standard model.