2.7 years of beta-decay-rate ratio measurements in a controlled environment

E McKnight; S D Bergeson; J Peatross; M J Ware

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2018.09.021

2.7 years of beta-decay-rate ratio measurements in a controlled environment

Appl Radiat Isot. 2018 Dec:142:113-119. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2018.09.021. Epub 2018 Sep 20.

Authors

E McKnight¹, S D Bergeson², J Peatross¹, M J Ware¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, United States.
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, United States. Electronic address: scott.bergeson@byu.edu.

PMID: 30273759
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2018.09.021

Abstract

We report nearly continuous beta-decay-rate measurements of Na-22, Cl-36, Co-60, Sr-90, and Cs-137 over a period of 2.7 years using four Geiger-Müller tubes. We carefully control the ambient pressure and temperature for the detectors, sources, and electronics in order to minimize environmentally-dependent systematic drifts in the measurement chains. We show that the amplitudes of an annual oscillation in the decay rates are consistent with zero to within 0.004%.

Keywords: Beta decay; Decay constant; Decay rate variability; Half-life; Non-exponential decay; Nuclear decay rate measurements; Nuclear decays; Radioactivity.