Unitarity Constraint upon Kinematical Analyses of the GSI Time-Modulated Radioactive Decay Experiment

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a unitarity theorem in quantum mechanics rules out certain interference-based explanations for the time-modulated decay rate observed in the GSI radioactive decay experiment.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical proof that a broad class of interference explanations cannot account for the observed decay modulation.

Findings

Unitarity constrains interference explanations

Certain decay rate modulations are incompatible with quantum mechanics

The paper rules out specific classes of explanations for GSI results

Abstract

It is tempting to try to explain the reported time-modulated decay rate in the GSI experiment by arguing that the matrix element for decay at any time results in an interference between two slightly different momentum values in the parent ion beam. I show here that a unitarity theorem of quantum mechanics rules out a wide class of such explanations.