Exchange correction for allowed $\beta$-decay

TL;DR

This paper improves the calculation of exchange effects in allowed β-decay by ensuring electron orthogonality, leading to better agreement with experiments, especially at low energies, and provides a systematic analysis across many emitters.

Contribution

It introduces a new method that enforces orthogonality in electron wave functions, significantly refining exchange correction calculations in β-decay.

Findings

Orthogonality significantly impacts exchange correction calculations.

Total exchange effect depends on Z and orbital closure at low energies.

Analytical expressions for exchange correction are provided for various Z.

Abstract

We investigate the exchange effect between the final atom's bound electrons and those emitted in the allowed $\beta$-decay of the initial nucleus. The electron wave functions are obtained with the Dirac-Hartree-Fock-Slater self-consistent method, and we ensure the orthogonality between the continuum and bound electron states, in the potential of the final atom, by modifying the last iteration of the self-consistent method. We show that orthogonality plays an essential role in calculating the exchange correction. After imposing the orthogonality, we found considerable differences in magnitude and energy dependence compared to previous results. We argue that our findings can solve the mismatch between the previous predictions and experimental measurements in the low-energy region of the $\beta$ spectrum. First, we calculate the exchange effect for the low-energy $\beta$ transitions in $^{14}$C, $^{45}$Ca, $^{63}$Ni, and $^{241}$Pu, recently investigated in the literature. Next, we compute the total exchange correction for a large number of $\beta$ emitters, with $Z$ from $1$ to $102$. From the systematic study, we found that for ultra-low energy, i.e., $5$ eV, the $Z$ dependence of total exchange effect is affected by $s_{1/2}$ and $p_{1/2}$ orbitals closure. We also show that the contributions from orbitals higher than $2s_{1/2}$ orbital are essential for correctly calculating the total effect, especially for low energies and heavy $\beta$ emitters. Finally, we provide an analytical expression of the total exchange correction for each atomic number for easy implementation in experimental investigations.