Beta-decay of 20Mg

Abstract

The β-decay of 20Mg was investigated. A secondary beam of 20Mg ions, produced in reactions between a 95 A·MeV24Mg-beam and a natNi-target, was isotopically separated by means of the LISE3 spectrometer at GANIL. This secondary beam was implanted into a silicon detector array surrounded by germanium γ-detectors. The β-delayed proton and γ-ray data, measured for this short-lived nucleus (T12 = 95 ± 3 ms), were incorporated into an improved 20Mg→20Na decay scheme. The 2645 keV level in 20Na is of importance for the breakout from the astrophysical hot CNO-cycle and the onset of the rapid proton capture process via the reaction 19Ne(p,γ)20Na. An upper limit of 0.1% for the β-decay feeding of the 2645 keV level and a lower limit for the corresponding log ft value of 6.24 were determined. The implications of this result for the spin and parity assignment of the 2645 keV state are discussed. By comparing the 20Mg β-decay into the proton-unbound 3001 keV state in 20Na and the isospin-mirrored decay into the particle-bound 3488 keV level in 20F, an asymmetry ft+ft− − 1 = 1.69−0.65+0.86 was observed. The comparison of the experimentally determined B(GT) values for the Gamow-Teller β-decay of 20Mg with a calculation performed in a full sd-shell model space yields an overall quenching of the Gamow-Teller strength of 0.84, corresponding to an observed fraction of 71% of the calculated strength. The measured Gamow-Teller strength above excitation energies of 3 MeV is more fragmented than predicted by the shell-model calculation.