Eur. Phys. J. A (2022) 58: 83
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-022-00730-w

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

High-precision half-life determination of O via direct  counting

¹ Department of Physics, University of Regina, S4S 0A2, Regina, SK, Canada
² TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, V6T 2A3, Vancouver, BC, Canada
³ Department of Physics, Queen’s University, K7L 3N6, Kingston, ON, Canada
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Guelph, N1G 2W1, Guelph, ON, Canada
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University, V5A 1S6, Burnaby, BC, Canada
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Vancouver, BC, Canada
⁷ Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, 80401, Golden, CO, USA
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, 46556, Notre Dame, IN, USA
⁹ Department of Physics, College of Education, University of Sulaimani, P.O. Box 334, Kurdistan Region, Sulaimani, Iraq
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape, P/B X17, 7535, Belleville, South Africa
¹¹ Department of Physics and Engineering, University of Zululand, P/B X1001, 3886, KwaDlangezwa, South Africa
¹² ISOLDE, CERN, CH-1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
¹³ Oliver Lodge Laboratory, University of Liverpool, L69 7ZE, Liverpool, UK

^b Gwen.Grinyer@uregina.ca

Received: 24 February 2022
Accepted: 10 April 2022
Published online: 3 May 2022

Abstract

The half-life of the superallowed Fermi  emitter O was determined to high precision via a direct  counting experiment performed at the Isotope Separator and Accelerator (ISAC) facility at TRIUMF. The result, (O) = 70619.2(76) ms, is consistent with, but is more precise than, the world average obtained from 11 previous measurements. Combining the O half-life deduced in the present work with the previous most precise measurements of this quantity leads to a reduction in the overall uncertainty, by nearly a factor of 2. The new world average is (O) = 70619.6(63) ms with a reduced  value of 0.87 obtained from 8 degrees of freedom.