The GSI anomaly

TL;DR

The paper discusses the GSI anomaly, an observed oscillating decay rate of heavy ions, and argues it cannot be explained by neutrino mixing but might be due to internal excitations of the ions.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the GSI anomaly and rules out neutrino mixing as its cause, suggesting an alternative explanation involving internal ion excitations.

Findings

Neutrino mixing cannot explain the GSI oscillations.

The effect might be due to hypothetical internal excitations of the ions.

Experimental results show oscillating decay rates in heavy ions.

Abstract

Recently, an experiment at GSI Darmstadt has observed oscillating decay rates of heavy ions. Several controversial attempts have been made to explain this effect in terms of neutrino mixing. We briefly describe the experimental results, give an overview of the literature, and show that the effect cannot be due to neutrino mixing. If the effect survives, it could, however, be explained by hypothetical internal excitations of the mother ions (~ 10^(-15) eV).