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arXiv · 1606.02846

A new technique for elucidating $\beta$-decay schemes which involve daughter nuclei with very low energy excited states

Abstract

A new technique of elucidating $\beta$-decay schemes of isotopes with large density of states at low excitation energies has been developed, in which a Broad Energy Germanium (BEGe) detector is used in conjunction with coaxial hyper-pure germanium detectors. The power of this technique has been demonstrated on the example of 183Hg decay. Mass-separated samples of 183Hg were produced by a deposition of the low-energy radioactive-ion beam delivered by the ISOLDE facility at CERN. The excellent energy resolution of the BEGe detector allowed $\gamma$ rays energies to be determined with a precision of a few tens of electronvolts, which was sufficient for the analysis of the Rydberg-Ritz combinations in the level scheme. The timestamped structure of the data was used for unambiguous separation of $\gamma$ rays arising from the decay of 183Hg from those due to the daughter decays.

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M. Venhart, J. L. Wood, A. J. Boston, T. E. Cocolios, L. J. Harkness-Brennan, R. -D. Herzberg, D. T. Joss, D. S. Judson, J. Kliman, V. Matousek, S. Motycak, R. D. Page, A. Patel, K. Petrik, M. Sedlak, M. Veselsky. 2016-06-09. A new technique for elucidating $\beta$-decay schemes which involve daughter nuclei with very low energy excited states. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.12.048

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