Ultra-short lifetime isomer studies from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense {\gamma}-ray

Author:

Di Wu, Haoyang Lan, Jiaxing Liu, Huangang Lu, Jianyao Zhang, Jianfeng Lv, Xuezhi Wu, Hui Zhang, Yadong Xia, Qiangyou He, Jie Cai, Qianyi Ma, Yuhui Xia, Zhenan Wang, Meizhi Wang, Zhiyan Yang, Xinlu Xu, Yixing Geng, Chen Lin, Wenjun Ma, Yanying Zhao, Haoran Wang, Fulong Liu, Chuangye He, Jinqing Yu, Bing Guo, Guoqiang Zhang, Furong Xu, Naiyan Wang, Yugang Ma, Gérard Mourou, Xueqing Yan

Keyword:

Nuclear Experiment, Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex), Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)

journal:

date:

2024-02-23 00:00:00

Abstract

Isomers, ubiquitous populations of relatively long-lived nuclear excited states, play a crucial role in nuclear physics. However, isomers with half-life times of several seconds or less barely had experimental cross section data due to the lack of a suitable measuring method. We report a method of online {\gamma} spectroscopy for ultra-short-lived isomers from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense {\gamma}-rays. The fastest time resolution can reach sub-ps level with {\gamma}-ray intensities >10^{19}/s ({\geqslant} 8 MeV). The ^{115}In({\gamma}, n)^{114m2}In reaction (T_{1/2} = 43.1 ms) was first measured in the high-energy region which shed light on the nuclear structure studies of In element. Simulations showed it would be an efficient way to study ^{229m}Th (T_{1/2} = 7 {\mu}s), which is believed to be the next generation of nuclear clock. This work offered a unique way of gaining insight into ultra-short lifetimes and promised an effective way to fill the gap in relevant experimental data.

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