Alpha-decay Rates of Yb and Gd in Solar Neutrino Detectors

Abstract

The $\alpha$-decay rates for the nuclides ${}^{168,170,171,172,173,174,176}$Yb and ${}^{148,150,152,154}$Gd have been estimated from transmission probabilities in a systematic $\alpha$-nucleus potential and from an improved fit to $\alpha$-decay rates in the rare-earth mass region. Whereas $\alpha$-decay of ${}^{152}$Gd in natural gadolinium is a severe obstacle for the use of gadolinium as a low-energy solar-neutrino detector, we show that $\alpha$-decay does not contribute significantly to the background in a ytterbium detector. An extremely long $\alpha$-decay lifetime of ${}^{168}$Yb is obtained from calculation, which may be close to the sensitivity limit in a low-background solar neutrino detector.

12 pages, 1 figure; An author name was corrected

References in corpus (5)

• Measurement of the rate of nu_e + d --> p + p + e^- interactions produced by 8B solar neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
• Measurement of the solar neutrino capture rate with gallium metal
• alpha-nucleus potentials for the neutron-deficient p nuclei
• Gamow-Teller Strengths of the Inverse-Beta Transition 176Yb --> 176Lu for Spectroscopy of Proton-Proton and other sub-MeV Solar Neutrinos
• A Measurement of Gamow-Teller Strength for 176Yb -> 176Lu and the Efficiency of a Solar Neutrino Detector

Cited by in corpus (2)

• alpha-nucleus potentials, alpha-decay half-lives, and shell closures for superheavy nuclei
• YAG:Nd crystals as possible detector to search for double beta and alpha decay of neodymium