Re: tritium beta decay anomalies

["Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>]

At 09:47 AM 7/21/00 -0500, Andrew wrote:
>I was looking through the xxx.lanl astrophysics e-prints and noticed the
>following abstract.  The full paper (4 pages, pdf format) says that the
>tritium beta spectrum shows anomalies in that there are more high-energy
>betas emitted than expected.  This is the first I've heard of this
>phenomenon and I was wondering if anyone else knows anything about this.
>Given tritium's low energy, this is no doubt of little practical importance,
>but it just looks interesting.
*****************************************
July 21, 2000
Davis, CA

Without looking at the article, I guess this means that the shape of the
beta energy distribution function is a little different than expected with
somewhat less beta of lower energies and somewhat more of the higher
energies. This may somewhat increase the mean energy (about 5.7 keV), but
will not affect the maximum energy (about 18.6 keV).

Otto
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