The electric quadrupole interaction in beta decay

Abstract

Submitted t o the Faculty -a£ Graduate StudiesSCOPE AlTD CONTE1fl'S l Although it has been customary in beta-decay the ory to assuine t hat t he f ield in which the decay elec t ron moves is s pherica lly symmetric a l , t here is o~ten a strong quadrupole i nt era c tion, compar ab le in magnitude at the nuclear surface to t he I c entral i nter a ction. This will couple together different angular momentum states of both the electron and t he daueht er nucleus.In t h is work tho wave functions of t hese c oupled s t ates have been obtained by an ess entially exac t s olution of the Dirac equation ~or an electron in a non-central potential. It was f ound t hat t he c oupling bet-'11een different dauehter 11uclear states was 17o a t t he very most, >rhich is i 1wufficient to a ccount for some observed anomal ies ·in branched decays of strongly deforme d nuclei.(ii)