Correlation Between Electron and Recoil Nucleus in He⁶ Decay

A STUDY of the correlation between the electron and the recoil nucleus in the He⁶-Li⁶ decay has been made to determine whether the tensor or axial vector interaction should be retained in the formulation of beta-theory. The remaining interactions, scalar, polar vector, and pseudoscalar, are forbidden for this particular transition on the basis of the allowed ft value of 815~70 seconds' and the nuclear spin change' b,I=1. A mixture of the Gamow-Teller interactions is not expected, as there is no evidence from the shape of allowed spectra for the existence of the energy dependent, Fierz interference term.

The agreement between the experimental data and the tensor interaction curves in these experiments indicates that the tensor interaction dominates. This is in agreement with recent data reported by Allen.


The authors wish to express their appreciation to Professor J. R. Dunning and Professor E. T. Booth for suggesting this problem, and their gratitude to Professor W. W. Havens, Jr., and Professor C. S. Wu for continual encouragement and many helpful discussions concerning the work.


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