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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 082501 (2003) [4 pages]

High Precision Measurement of the Superallowed 0+→0+β Decay of 22Mg

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J. C. Hardy, V. E. Iacob, M. Sanchez-Vega, R. G. Neilson, A. Azhari, C. A. Gagliardi, V. E. Mayes, X. Tang, L. Trache, and R. E. Tribble
Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA

Received 30 January 2003; published 20 August 2003

The half-life, 3.8755(12) s, and superallowed branching ratio, 0.5315(12), for 22Mg β decay have been measured with high precision. The latter depended on γ-ray intensities being measured with an HPGe detector calibrated for relative efficiencies to an unprecedented 0.15%. Previous precise measurements of 0+→0+ transitions have been restricted to the nine that populate stable daughter nuclei. No more such cases exist, and any improvement in a critical Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity test must depend on precise measurements of more exotic nuclei. With this branching-ratio measurement, we show those to be possible for Tz=-1 parents. We obtain a corrected Ft value of 3071(9) s, in good agreement with expectations.


©2003 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.082501
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.082501
PACS: 23.40.Bw, 23.40.Hc, 27.30.+t, 29.40.Wk

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