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Register a new userPhase Transition in the Thorium-Isomer Story
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Given the drastic progress achieved during recent years in our knowledge on the decay and nuclear properties of the thorium isomer 229mTh, the focus of research on this potential nuclear clock transition will turn in the near future from the nuclear physics driven `search and characterization phase towards a laser physics driven `consolidation and realization phase. This prepares the path towards the ultimate goal of the realization of a nuclear frequency standard, the `Nuclear Clock. This article briefly summarizes our present knowledge, focusing on recent achievements, and points to the next steps envisaged on the way towards the Nuclear Clock.
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Thorium-229 is a unique case in nuclear physics: it presents a metastable first excited state Th-229m, just a few electronvolts above the nuclear ground state. This so-called isomer is accessible by VUV lasers, which allows transferring the amazing precision of atomic laser spectroscopy to nuclear physics. Being able to manipulate the Th-229 nuclear states at will opens up a multitude of prospects, from studies of the fundamental interactions in physics to applications as a compact and robust nuclear clock. However, direct optical excitation of the isomer or its radiative decay back to the ground state has not yet been observed, and a series of key nuclear structure parameters such as the exact energies and half-lives of the low-lying nuclear levels of Th-229 are yet unknown. Here we present the first active optical pumping into Th-229m. Our scheme employs narrow-band 29 keV synchrotron radiation to resonantly excite the second excited state, which then predominantly decays into the isomer. We determine the resonance energy with 0.07 eV accuracy, measure a half-life of 82.2 ps, an excitation linewidth of 1.70 neV, and extract the branching ratio of the second excited state into the ground and isomeric state respectively. These measurements allow us to re-evaluate gamma spectroscopy data that have been collected over 40~years.
It is proposed to use the isomer ionic ground state $^{229m}$Th$^{4+}$ embedded in transparent crystals for precision determination of unknown neutrino parameters. Isolation from solid environment of the proposed nuclear process, along with available experimental techniques of atomic physics, has a great potentiality for further study.
The GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) of INFN is searching for neutrinoless double-beta ($0 ubetabeta$) decay of $^{76}$Ge. The technological challenge of GERDA is to operate in a background-free regime in the region of interest (ROI) after analysis cuts for the full 100$,$kg$cdot$yr target exposure of the experiment. A careful modeling and decomposition of the full-range energy spectrum is essential to predict the shape and composition of events in the ROI around $Q_{betabeta}$ for the $0 ubetabeta$ search, to extract a precise measurement of the half-life of the double-beta decay mode with neutrinos ($2 ubetabeta$) and in order to identify the location of residual impurities. The latter will permit future experiments to build strategies in order to further lower the background and achieve even better sensitivities. In this article the background decomposition prior to analysis cuts is presented for GERDA Phase II. The background model fit yields a flat spectrum in the ROI with a background index (BI) of $16.04^{+0.78}_{-0.85} cdot 10^{-3},$cts/(kg$cdot$keV$cdot$yr) for the enriched BEGe data set and $14.68^{+0.47}_{-0.52} cdot 10^{-3},$cts/(kg$cdot$keV$cdot$yr) for the enriched coaxial data set. These values are similar to the one of Gerda Phase I despite a much larger number of detectors and hence radioactive hardware components.
A search for neutrinoless $betabeta$ decay processes accompanied with Majoron emission has been performed using data collected during Phase I of the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN (Italy). Processes with spectral indices n = 1, 2, 3, 7 were searched for. No signals were found and lower limits of the order of 10$^{23}$ yr on their half-lives were derived, yielding substantially improved results compared to previous experiments with $^{76}$Ge. A new result for the half-life of the neutrino-accompanied $betabeta$ decay of $^{76}$Ge with significantly reduced uncertainties is also given, resulting in $T^{2 u}_{1/2} = (1.926 pm 0.095)cdot10^{21}$ yr.
We report the first observation of the 2$^+$ isomer in $^{52}$Co, produced in the $beta$ decay of the 0$^+$, $^{52}$Ni ground state. We have observed three $gamma$-rays at 849, 1910, and 5185 keV characterizing the $beta$ de-excitation of the isomer. We have measured a half-life of 102(6) ms for the isomeric state. The Fermi and Gamow-Teller transition strengths for the $beta$ decay of $^{52m}$Co to $^{52}$Fe have been determined. We also add new information on the $beta$ decay of the 6$^+$, $^{52}$Co ground state, for which we have measured a half-life of 112(3) ms.
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