¹³⁷Ba Double Gamma Decay Measurement with GAMMASPHERE

¹ Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854
² National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973
³ Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60473
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, United Kingdom

^a e-mail: edanakarina_merchanrodriguez@uml.edu

Published online: 28 May 2015

Abstract

The study of the electromagnetic moments (EM), and decay probability, provides detailed information about nuclear wave functions. The well-know properties of EM interactions are good for extracting information about the motion of nucleons. Higher order EM processes always occur, but are usually too weak to be measured. In the case of a 0⁺ → 0⁺ transitions [1, 2], where a single gamma transition is forbidden, the simultaneous emission of two γ-rays has been studied. An interesting opportunity to further investigate 2-photon emission phenomena is by using a standard ¹³⁷Cs source populating, via β-decay, the J^π = 11/2⁻ isomeric state at 662 keV in ¹³⁷Ba. In this case, two photon process can have contributions from quadrupole-quadrupole or dipole-octupole multipolarities in direct competition with the high multipolarity M4 decay. Since the yield of the double gamma decay is around six orders of magnitude less than the first order transition, very good statistics are needed in order to observe the phenomena and great care must be taken to suppress the first-order decay. The Gammasphere array is ideal since its configuration allows a good coverage of the angular distribution and the Compton events can be suppressed. Nevertheless the process to understand and eliminate the Compton background is a challenge. Geant4 simulations were carried out to help understand and correct for those factors.