No abstract

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.122501.

The effect of the tensor force on β decay is studied in the framework of the proton-neutron random phase approximation with the Skyrme force. The investigation is performed for even-even semimagic and magic nuclei, (34)Si, (68,78)Ni, and (132)Sn. The tensor correlation induces strong impact on the low-lying Gamow-Teller state. In particular, it improves the β-decay half-lives. Q and ft values are also investigated and compared with experimental data.

Fission-related phenomena of heavy Λ hypernuclei are discussed with the constraint Skyrme-Hartree-Fock+BCS (SHF+BCS) method, in which a similar Skyrme-type interaction is employed also for the interaction between a Λ particle and a nucleon. Assuming that the Λ particle adiabatically follows the fission motion, we discuss the fission barrier height of 239 Λ U. We find that the fission barrier height increases slightly when the Λ particle occupies the lowest level. In this case, the Λ particle is always attached to the heavier fission fragment. This indicates that one may produce heavy neutron-rich Λ hypernuclei through fission, whose weak decay is helpful for the nuclear transmutation of long-lived fission products. We also discuss cases where the Λ particle occupies a higher single-particle level.

A new system proposed for the generation of radioisotopes with accelerator neutrons by deuterons (GRAND) is described by mainly discussing the production of 99 Mo used for nuclear medicine diagnosis. A prototype facility of this system consists of a cyclotron to produce intense accelerator neutrons from the nat C(d,n) reaction with 40 MeV 2 mA deuteron beams, and a sublimation system to separate 99m Tc from an irradiated 100 MoO 3 sample. About 8.1 TBq/week of 99 Mo is produced by repeating irradiation on an enriched 100 Mo sample (251 g) with accelerator neutrons for two days three times. It meets about 10% of the 99 Mo demand in Japan. The characteristic feature of the system lies in its capability to reliably produce a wide variety of high-quality, carrier-free, carrier-added radioisotopes with a minimum level of radioactive waste without using uranium. The system is compact in size, and easy to operate; therefore it could be used worldwide to produce radioisotopes for medical, research, and industrial applications.