16 Facts About Beta decay

In nuclear physics, beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta particle is emitted from an atomic nucleus, transforming the original nuclide to an isobar of that nuclide.

Beta decay is a consequence of the weak force, which is characterized by relatively lengthy decay times.

Since a proton or neutron has lepton number zero, ß Beta decay must be accompanied with an electron neutrino, while ß Beta decay must be accompanied by an electron antineutrino.

The total energy of the Beta decay process is divided between the electron, the antineutrino, and the recoiling nuclide.

Beta decay found that for a beta particle is the same as for Thomson's electron, and therefore suggested that the beta particle is in fact an electron.

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Study of beta decay provided the first physical evidence for the existence of the neutrino.

In both alpha and gamma Beta decay, the resulting alpha or gamma particle has a narrow energy distribution, since the particle carries the energy from the difference between the initial and final nuclear states.

For beta decay the observed broad distribution of energies suggested that energy is lost in the beta decay process.

Beta decay suggested that this "neutron" was emitted during beta decay, but it had simply not yet been observed.

The converse is not true: electron capture is the only type of Beta decay that is allowed in proton-rich nuclides that do not have sufficient energy to emit a positron and neutrino.

Beta decay can be considered as a perturbation as described in quantum mechanics, and thus Fermi's Golden Rule can be applied.

Where is the kinetic energy, is a shape function that depends on the forbiddenness of the Beta decay, is the Fermi Function with Z the charge of the final-state nucleus, is the total energy, - is the momentum, and is the Q value of the Beta decay.

Kurie plot is a graph used in studying beta decay developed by Franz N D Kurie, in which the square root of the number of beta particles whose momenta lie within a certain narrow range, divided by the Fermi function, is plotted against beta-particle energy.

Since total angular momentum must be conserved, including orbital and spin angular momentum, beta decay occurs by a variety of quantum state transitions to various nuclear angular momentum or spin states, known as "Fermi" or "Gamow–Teller" transitions.

When beta decay particles carry no angular momentum, the decay is referred to as "allowed", otherwise it is "forbidden".

Double beta decay is difficult to study, as the process has an extremely long half-life.