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Can Bose-Einstein condensates enhance radioactive decay?

Quantum Physics 2025-11-03 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment Atomic Physics

Abstract

This paper lays out the principles of how Bose-Einstein condensates can modify radioactive decay. We highlight the challenges of many modes and short coherence times due to the \approx MeV energies of the emitted radiation. Recent proposals for gamma ray and neutrino lasers claim that using a Bose-Einstein condensate as a source would solve these issues. We show that this is not the case, and the proposed experiments would have a gain of only 102010^{-20} or smaller. We also analyze proposals for gamma ray lasers based on stimulated annihilation of positronium Bose-Einstein condensates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.21692,
  title  = {Can Bose-Einstein condensates enhance radioactive decay?},
  author = {Hanzhen Lin and Yukun Lu and Wolfgang Ketterle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.21692},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Updated reference

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:04:24.881Z