A1 Journal article (refereed)
Direct high-precision measurement of the mass difference of 77As–77Se related to neutrino mass determination (2024)

Ge, Z., Eronen, T., Ramalho, M., de Roubin, A., Nesterenko D., A., Kankainen, A., Beliuskina, O., de Groote, R., Geldhof, S., Gins, W., Hukkanen, M., Jokinen, A., Koszorús, Á., Kotila, J., Kostensalo, J., Moore I., D., Pirinen, P., Raggio, A., Rinta-Antila, S., . . . Zadvornaya, A. (2024). Direct high-precision measurement of the mass difference of 77As–77Se related to neutrino mass determination. European Physical Journal A, 60(5), Article 104. https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-024-01317-3

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Ge, Z.; Eronen, T.; Ramalho, M.; de Roubin, A.; Nesterenko D., A.; Kankainen, A.; Beliuskina, O.; de Groote, R.; Geldhof, S.; Gins, W.; et al.

Journal or series: European Physical Journal A

ISSN: 1434-6001

eISSN: 1434-601X

Publication year: 2024

Publication date: 08/05/2024

Volume: 60

Issue number: 5

Article number: 104

Publisher: Springer

Publication country: Germany

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-024-01317-3

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Partially open access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/95487

Publication is parallel published: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.15242

Abstract

The first direct determination of the ground-state-to-ground-state β−-decay Q-value of 77As to 77Se was performed by measuring their atomic mass difference utilizing the double Penning trap mass spectrometer, JYFLTRAP. The resulting Q-value is 684.463(70) keV, representing a remarkable 24-fold improvement in precision compared to the value reported in the most recent Atomic Mass Evaluation (AME2020). With the significant reduction of the uncertainty of the ground-state-to-ground-state Q-value and knowledge of the excitation energies in 77Se from γ-ray spectroscopy, the ground-state-to-excited-state Q-value of the transition 77As (3/2−, ground state) → 77Se∗ (5/2+, 680.1035(17) keV) was refined to be 4.360(70) keV. We confirm that this potential low Q-value β−-decay transition for neutrino mass determination is energetically allowed at a confidence level of about 60σ. Nuclear shell-model calculations with two well-established effective Hamiltonians were used to estimate the partial half-life for the low Q-value transition. The half-life was found to be of the order of 109 years for this first-forbidden non-unique transition, which rules out this candidate a potential source for rare-event experiments searching for the electron antineutrino mass.

Keywords: nuclear physics; particle physics; neutrinos; mass (physics)

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Ministry reporting: Yes

VIRTA submission year: 2024

Preliminary JUFO rating: 2