Search for non-Poissonian behavior in nuclear beta-decay

Abstract

We performed two independent counting experiments on a beta-emitting source of Sm151 by measuring the gamma-photon emitted in a fraction of the decays. For counting times ranging from 10**-3 to 5.12*10**4 seconds, our measurements show no evidence of deviations from Poissonian behavior and, in particular, no sign of 1/f noise. These measurements put strong limits on non-Poissonian components of the fluctuations for the subset of decays accompanied by gamma, and corresponding limits for the total number of beta-decays. In particular, the magnitude of a hypothetical flicker floor is strongly bounded also for the beta-decay. This result further constrains theories predicting anomalous fluctuations in nuclear decays.