Search for Electron Capture in 176Lu with LYSO scintillator
Abstract
The nuclide 176Lu is one of the few naturally occurring isotopes that are potentially unstable with respect to electron capture (EC). Although experimental evidence for 176Lu EC decay is still missing, this isotope is instead well known to β- decay into 176Hf with an half-life of about 38 Gyr. The precise investigation of all 176Lu possible decay modes is interesting because the Lu/Hf ratio is adopted as an isotopic clock. Previous searches for the 176Lu EC decay were performed by using a passive Lutetium source coupled with an HP-Ge spectrometer. Our approach uses a LYSO crystal both as Lutetium source and as an active detector. Scintillation light from the LYSO crystal is acquired in coincidence with the signals from the HP-Ge detector, this allows a powerful suppression of the background sourcing from the well known β- decay branch. This coincidence approach led to an improvement on the 176Lu EC branching ratio limits by a factor 3 to 30, depending on the considered EC channel.
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