Experimental searches for rare alpha and beta decays

Abstract

The current status of the experimental searches for rare alpha and beta decays is reviewed. Several interesting observations of alpha and beta decays, previously unseen due to their large half-lives ($10^{15}-10^{20}$ yr), have been achieved during the last years thanks to the improvements in the experimental techniques and to the underground locations of experiments that allows to suppress backgrounds. In particular, the list includes first observations of alpha decays of ${}^{151}$Eu, ${}^{180}$W (both to the ground state of the daughter nuclei), ${}^{190}$Pt (to excited state of the daughter nucleus), ${}^{209}$Bi (to the ground and excited states of the daughter nucleus). The isotope ${}^{209}$Bi has the longest known half-life of $T_{1/2}\approx 10^{19}$ yr relatively to alpha decay. The beta decay of ${}^{115}$In to the first excited state of ${}^{115}$Sn (E${}_{exc}=497.334$ keV), recently observed for the first time, has the $Q_{\beta }$ value of only $(147\pm 10)$ eV, which is the lowest $Q_{\beta }$ value known to-date. Searches and investigations of other rare alpha and beta decays (${}^{48}$Ca, ${}^{50}$V, ${}^{96}$Zr, ${}^{113}$Cd, ${}^{123}$Te, ${}^{178m2}$Hf, ${}^{180m}$Ta and others) are also discussed.

arXiv comment41 pages, 33 figures; 11 tables

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Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Search for alpha decay of naturally occurring osmium nuclides accompanied by gamma quanta
• Phonon-mediated crystal detectors with metallic film coating capable of rejecting $\alpha$ and $\beta$ events induced by surface radioactivity
• Measurement of ${}^{216}$Po half-life with the CUPID-0 experiment
• First search for $\alpha$ decays of naturally occurring Hf nuclides with emission of $\gamma$ quanta
• Development of cryogenic calorimeters to measure the spectral shape of In-115 beta decay
• On the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition and assault frequency in a semiclassical model for α decay
• Search for rare alpha and double beta decays of Yb isotopes to excited levels of daughter nuclei
• Limitations of the Geiger-Nuttall Law in heavy cluster decay
• Higher forbidden unique ${\beta }^{-}$ decay transitions and shell-model interpretation