Can Bose-Einstein condensates enhance radioactive decay?

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the potential of Bose-Einstein condensates to enhance radioactive decay, concluding that proposed gamma ray and neutrino laser schemes offer negligible gains and face significant challenges.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis showing that Bose-Einstein condensates are unlikely to significantly improve radioactive decay processes or enable practical gamma ray lasers.

Findings

Proposed gamma ray and neutrino laser schemes yield gains of less than 10^{-20}

Challenges include many modes and short coherence times at MeV energies

Bose-Einstein condensates are unlikely to substantially modify radioactive decay

Abstract

This paper lays out the principles of how Bose-Einstein condensates can modify radioactive decay. We highlight the challenges of many modes and short coherence times due to the $\approx$ MeV energies of the emitted radiation. Recent proposals for gamma ray and neutrino lasers claim that using a Bose-Einstein condensate as a source would solve these issues. We show that this is not the case, and the proposed experiments would have a gain of only $10^{-20}$ or smaller. We also analyze proposals for gamma ray lasers based on stimulated annihilation of positronium Bose-Einstein condensates.