Speaker
Description
Nuclear isomers are metastable excited states with half-lives that can range over orders of magnitude from nanoseconds to billions of years. The states owe their long half-lives to a hindered transition to the ground state which arise due to a mismatch between starting and final states. Isomeric states impact multiple nuclear science applications including nucleosynthesis. The decay modes of isomeric states are varied leading to the potential emission of charged particles, photons, and (potentially) neutrons.
With recent advances in analysis techniques, it is possible to determine model-independent partial level densities in some short-lived nuclei. The application of these analysis techniques following beta decay can provide a partial level density over a limited spin range. If the parent nucleus has multiple isomeric beta decaying states with different spins, then a partial level density can be inferred within different spin windows. This provides a means to extract some of the first information on the spin distribution at high excitation energy in the resulting nucleus. Simulated results will be presented along with the prospects for application to experimental data and the experimental facilitates needed to isolate the required isomeric states.
