Measurement of the ${\beta }^{+}$ and orbital electron-capture decay rates in fully-ionized, hydrogen-like, and helium-like ${}^{140}$Pr ions

Abstract

We report on the first measurement of the ${\beta }^{+}$- and orbital electron capture decay rates of ${}^{140}$Pr nuclei with the most simple electron configurations: bare nuclei, hydrogen-like and helium-like ions. The measured electron capture decay constant of hydrogen-like ${}^{140}$Pr${}^{58+}$ ions is about 50% larger than that of helium-like ${}^{140}$Pr${}^{57+}$ ions. Moreover, ${}^{140}$Pr ions with one bound electron decay faster than neutral ${}^{140}$Pr${}^{0+}$ atoms with 59 electrons. To explain this peculiar observation one has to take into account the conservation of the total angular momentum, since only particular spin orientations of the nucleus and of the captured electron can contribute to the allowed decay.

4 pages, 3 figures

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Observation of Non-Exponential Orbital Electron Capture Decays of Hydrogen-Like ${}^{140}$Pr and ${}^{142}$Pm Ions
• Heavy-Ion Storage Rings and Their Use in Precision Experiments with Highly Charged Ions
• Nuclear excitation by electron capture followed by fast x-ray emission
• Expanding Nuclear Physics Horizons with the Gamma Factory
• Weak decays of H-like 140Pr58+ and He-like 140Pr57+ ions
• Search for Oscillation of the Electron-Capture Decay Probability of ${}^{142}$Pm
• On the Time-Modulation of the beta^+$-Decay Rate of H-like 140Pr58+ Ion
• Excitation and probing of low-energy nuclear states at high-energy storage rings
• First-Forbidden Continuum- and Bound-State beta^- -Decay Rates of Bare 205Hg80+ and 207Tl81+ Ions
• Kinematics and Quantum Field Theory of the Neutrino Oscillations Observed in the Time-modulated Orbital Electron Capture Decay in an Ion Storage Ring
• Hyperfine Level Splitting for Hydrogen-Like Ions due to Rotation-Spin Coupling
• Denoising scheme based on singular-value decomposition for one-dimensional spectra and its application in precision storage-ring mass spectrometry
• Coupling highly excited nuclei to the atomic shell in dense astrophysical plasmas
• Polarization-Dependent Disappearance of a Resonance Signal -- Indication for Optical Pumping in a Storage Ring?
• Finite-nuclear-size effect for hydrogenlike ions under high external pressure
• Half-life determination of heavy ions in a storage ring considering feeding and depleting background processes
• Electroweak Decay Studies of Highly Charged Radioactive Ions with TITAN at TRIUMF