Measurement of Electron Capture Ratios and Internal Conversion Coefficient Ratios with a Solid State Detector

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the measurement of electron capture ratios and internal conversion coefficient ratios with a solid-state detector. The method to determine the electron-capture ratio applies only to the cases where electron-capture decay leads to a metastable state of the daughter nucleus. The accuracy of the value of P LM / P K is dependent on the accuracy of the measurement of α K . In the case of electron-capture decay from a given level to different levels of daughter nucleus, the branching ratio must be known with good accuracy. It is difficult to obtain small error limits where the transition energy is large compared to the K-shell binding energy because according to the electron-capture theory, that would necessitate the measurement of P LM / P K or P L / P K with a precision. The transition energies obtained from the measurements of the P LM / P K or P L / P K ratio and from the recent study of the inner bremsstrahlung spectrum are anything but close, and this inconsistency may be traced to some uncertainties in the theory of electron capture.