A Measurement of Gamow-Teller Strength for 176Yb -> 176Lu and the Efficiency of a Solar Neutrino Detector

Abstract

We report a 0-degree 176Yb(p,n)176Lu measurement at IUCF where we used 120 and 160 MeV protons and the energy dependence method to determine GT matrix elements relative to the Fermi matrix element which can be calculated model independently. The data show that there is an isolated concentration of GT strength in the low lying 1+ states making the proposed Low Energy Neutrino Spectroscopy (LENS) detector (based on neutrino captures on 176Yb) sensitive to 7Be and pp neutrinos and a promising detector to resolve the solar neutrino problem.