New UCBNE Publication Chosen as an Editor’s Suggestion in Physical Review C

The recently published paper “Half-life of Ge-71 and the gallium anomaly”, co-authored by UCBNE Professor Eric Norman has been chosen as an “Editor’s Suggestion” in the journal Physical Review C. 

A summary of the paper put out by PRC:

Several past experiments such as SAGE, GALLEX, and BEST reported lower than expected neutrino capture rates on Ga-71. The origin of this so-called “gallium anomaly” could potentially indicate new neutrino physics, unless there was a more mundane explanation. Because the measured half- life of the electron-capture decay of Ge-71 can be used to calculate the neutrino-capture cross section on Ga-71, the authors carried out three separate measurements to determine the half-life of Ge-71 with high precision. Their new result of 11.468±0.008 days for the Ge-71 half-life is consistent with the currently accepted value, but significantly more precise. It rules out an unexpectedly long Ge-71 half-life as a potential explanation of the puzzling anomaly, leaving the anomaly’s origin an open question.

Read the full paper on Physical Review C.

E. B. Norman, A. Drobizhev, N. Gharibyan, K. E. Gregorich, Yu. G. Kolomensky, B. N. Sammis, N. D. Scielzo, J. A. Shusterman, and K. J. Thomas Phys. Rev. C 109, 055501 (2024) – Published 30 May 2024