Overestimated isomer depletion due to contamination

TL;DR

This paper critically reanalyzes experimental evidence for nuclear excitation by electron capture in Molybdenum-93, revealing that the reported isomer depletion was overestimated due to contamination, challenging previous claims of NEEC detection.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that contamination significantly affected the reported isomer depletion, clarifying that the observed effects are not due to NEEC as previously claimed.

Findings

Reported isomer depletion was overestimated due to contamination

The actual NEEC probability is much lower than initially inferred

Contamination explains the observed isomer depletion in the experiment

Abstract

The recent paper by Chiara et al. provided the first experimental evidence of nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC), responding a long-standing theoretical prediction. NEEC was inferred to be the main channel to excite an isomer in Molybdenum-93 to a higher state, leading to a rapid release of full isomer energy (isomer depletion). The deduced large excitation probability $P_{exc}$=0.010(3) for this mechanism implied strong influence on the survival of nuclei in stellar environments. However, the excitation probability is much higher than the estimated NEEC probability $P_{NEEC}$ according to a following theoretical work by approximately 9 orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, the reported $P_{exc}$ is predicted to be due to other unknown mechanism causing isomer depletion, which is expected to open up a new era of the storage and release of nuclear energy. Here we report an analysis of the reported experimental results, showing that the observed isomer depletion is significantly overestimated due to the contamination.