Ground-state and decay properties of neutron-rich 106Nb
Abstract
The ground-state properties of neutron-rich 106Nb and its beta decay into 106Mo have been studied using the CARIBU radioactive-ion-beam facility at Argonne National Laboratory. Niobium-106 ions were extracted from a 252Cf fission source and mass separated before being delivered as low-energy beams to the Canadian Penning Trap, as well as the X-Array and SATURN beta-decay-spectroscopy station. The measured 106Nb ground-state mass excess of -66202.0(13) keV is consistent with a recent measurement but has three times better precision; this work also rules out the existence of a second long-lived, beta-decaying state in 106Nb above 5 keV in excitation energy. The decay half-life of 106Nb was measured to be 1.097(21) s, which is 8% longer than the adopted value. The level scheme of the decay progeny, 106Mo, has been expanded up to approximately 4 MeV. The distribution of decay strength and considerable population of excited states in 106Mo of J >= 3 emphasises the need to revise the adopted Jpi = 1- ground-state spin-parity assignment of 106Nb; it is more likely to be J => 3.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2102.03996,
title = {Ground-state and decay properties of neutron-rich 106Nb},
author = {A. J. Mitchell and R. Orford and G. J. Lane and C. J. Lister and P. Copp and J. A. Clark and G. Savard and J. M. Allmond and A. D. Ayangeakaa and S. Bottoni and M. P. Carpenter and P. Chowdhury and D. A. Gorelov and R. V. F. Janssens and F. G. Kondev and U. Patel and D. Seweryniak and M. L. Smith and Y. Y. Zhong and S. Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.03996},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
16 pages, 9 figures, accepted in Physical Review C (02/02/2021)