High precision measurement of the 6He half-life

M. Kanafani (1) , X. Fléchard (1) , O. Naviliat-Cuncic (2, 1) , G. D. Chung (1) , Sylvain Leblond (3) , E. Liénard (1) , Xavier Mougeot (3) , G. Quéméner (1) , A. Simancas Di Filippo (4, 1) , J.-C. Thomas (5)

1 LPCC - Laboratoire de physique corpusculaire de Caen
2 Michigan State University [East Lansing]
3 LNHB (CEA, LIST) - Laboratoire National Henri Becquerel (CEA, LIST)
4 DESY - Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron [Hamburg]
5 GANIL - Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds

The half-life of $^6$He has been measured using a low-energy radioactive beam implanted in an YAlO$_3$ Ce-doped inorganic scintillator and recording decay events in a 4π geometry. Events were time-stamped with a digital data acquisition system enabling a reliable control of dead-time effects and detector gain variations. The result, T$_{1/2}$ = (807.25 ± 0.16$_{stat}$ ± 0.11$_{sys}$) ms, provides the most precise value obtained so far and is consistent with the only previous measurement having a precision smaller than 0.1%. This resolves the long-standing discrepancy previously observed between two sets of measurements.

Keywords: detector; 6He; nuclear instrumentation; instrumentation; Radioactivity; ionizing radiation; inorganic scintillator

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]

M. Kanafani, X. Fléchard, O. Naviliat-Cuncic, G. D. Chung, Sylvain Leblond, et al.. High precision measurement of the 6He half-life. Physical Review C, 2022, 106, pp.045502. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevC.106.045502⟩. ⟨cea-04123106⟩