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High Centrifugal Fields and Radioactive Decay

Simon Freed, A. H. Jaffey, and M. L. Schultz

  • George Herbert Jones Laboratory, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Phys. Rev. 63, 12 – Published 1 January, 1943

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.63.12

Abstract

Previous experiments to detect some influence on the decay process of a naturally radioactive substance by means of centrifugal fields (20,000 g) had yielded no effect within 0.1 percent. It seemed of value to re-examine such a possibility in view of the high centrifugal fields (order of 1,000,000 g) now available, the new types of decay processes in artificial radioactivity, and the non-electromagnetic forces now recognized as operating in atomic nuclei. Except for fission an example of each type of radioactive decay was investigated. Two methods were employed, one of which made use of a toroidal tube counter surrounding the spinning rotor. An ionization chamber furnished a precision of several tenths of a percent and the counter allowed a precision of several percent. No definite effect was found. However, in Br80 where a transition occurs between isomers by emission of gamma-rays rather than the usual transformation within the nucleus involving charged particles, there was some sign of systematic deviation from the accepted half-lives in a centrifugal field of 632,000 g but it may be within the total experimental error.

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