Measurement of the Branching Ratio for the Beta Decay of ¹⁴O

الأصل · EN

We present a new measurement of the branching ratio for the decay of ¹⁴O to the ground state of ¹⁴N. The experimental result, λ₀/λ total = (4.934 ± 0.040 1pt (stat.) ± 0.061 1pt (syst.)) × 10⁻³, is significantly smaller than previous determinations of this quantity. The new measurement allows an improved determination of the partial halflife for the superallowed 0+ → 0+ Fermi decay to the ¹⁴N first excited state, which impacts the determination of the Vud element of the CKM matrix. With the new measurement in place, the corrected ¹⁴O F t value is in good agreement with the average F t for other superallowed 0+ → 0+ Fermi decays.