Volume 18: Pages 31-36, 2005

A Possible Answer to the Right‐Left Asymmetry of β Decay

Shan‐Noon Yie

Electrical Engineering Department, Lee‐Ming Institute of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

The number of β particles emitted via beta decay has been found to vary with the final states of emitted particles, the nuclear Coulomb field, the initial and final nuclear states, the momentum, etc. But that it might correlate with the magnetic field is not reported in the literature. According to the experimental result of ₂₁₀Bi decay, in this paper it is reasonably assumed that the number of β particles emitted linearly varies with the energy released by the decay. Then the number of β particles emitted will be in terms of a cosine form as a directional external magnetic field is applied. This is because a β particle has spin and a magnetic moment to interact with that magnetic field. The energy is shifted as μ                         B to distribute the β's angularly in a function of the form N = N₀ − acos θ. This treatment interprets the asymmetrical prediction and experimental results reported in the previous literature well. Its mathematical calculation can be simply done by a radiation circle shifted in an N‐θ diagram.

Keywords: β decay, asymmetry, number‐energy spectrum of decay particles, vector‐axial vector interaction

Received: July 4, 2003; Published online: December 15, 2008