First measurement and ab initio calculation of rare excited nucleus' energy loss

First measurement and ab initio calculation of rare excited nucleus' energy loss Using GRIFFIN, researchers confirmed the existence of a very rare case of energy loss from excited scandium-50 (⁵⁰Sc) nuclei and the TRIUMF theory group produced the first ab initio calculation of this transition rate. Nuclei in hot excited states become more stable by emitting radiation in the form of gamma (γ) rays, high energy photons, that carry away both energy and angular momentum. Usually, the gamma rays carry away one or two units of angular momentum and do not change the parity. As reported in Physical Review C (2017), scientists used the GRIFFIN spectrometer to identify the angular momentum of states in ⁵⁰Sc using γ-γ angular correlations. The existence was of a transition magnetic octupole was confirmed which carries away three units of angular momentum at once. This decay is so rare that the parent state lives for a full half a second instead of the typical one- trillionth of a second.