Calculating the Excited State Lifetime of 223Ra Nucleus

phyguy321
Messages
45
Reaction score
0

Homework Statement


the nucleus of 227Th decays to 223Ra and \alpha. the daughter nucleus is left in a short lived excited state and decays down to the ground state with the emission of an 80 keV gamma ray. the natural line width of this gamma ray is .6 keV. what is the lifetime of the excited state of the 223Ra nucleus?


Homework Equations


\DeltaE \Deltat = \hbar/2 where \Deltat is the lifetime \tau


The Attempt at a Solution


can i just solve for \Deltat as the lifetime of the excited state? letting \DeltaE = 80 keV? I am not sure what to do with the line width, it's not in my book anywhere.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
The 80 keV photon isn't the thing that determines the lifetime of the state. Check this out and see if it doesn't clear things up.

http://www.mwit.ac.th/~Physicslab/hbase/quantum/parlif.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
so the .6 keV is our uncertainty energy?
so \Deltat =hbar/2E
 

Thread 'Direction of the magnetic field of an oscillating charge'

Hello everyone, I’m considering a point charge q that oscillates harmonically about the origin along the z-axis, e.g. $$z_{q}(t)= A\sin(wt)$$ In a strongly simplified / quasi-instantaneous approximation I ignore retardation and take the electric field at the position ##r=(x,y,z)## simply to be the “Coulomb field at the charge’s instantaneous position”: $$E(r,t)=\frac{q}{4\pi\varepsilon_{0}}\frac{r-r_{q}(t)}{||r-r_{q}(t)||^{3}}$$ with $$r_{q}(t)=(0,0,z_{q}(t))$$ (I’m aware this isn’t...
View full post »

Thread 'Initial conditions for orbits around a wormhole'

Hi, I had an exam and I completely messed up a problem. Especially one part which was necessary for the rest of the problem. Basically, I have a wormhole metric: $$(ds)^2 = -(dt)^2 + (dr)^2 + (r^2 + b^2)( (d\theta)^2 + sin^2 \theta (d\phi)^2 )$$ Where ##b=1## with an orbit only in the equatorial plane. We also know from the question that the orbit must satisfy this relationship: $$\varepsilon = \frac{1}{2} (\frac{dr}{d\tau})^2 + V_{eff}(r)$$ Ultimately, I was tasked to find the initial...
View full post »

Similar threads

Uncertainty Principle and the lifetime of an excited state
Replies
1
Views
2K
Upper bound for first excited state - variational principle
Replies
2
Views
2K
Is this the correct way to estimate the natural lifetime of an atomic state?
Replies
3
Views
3K
A Beta/gamma decay probabilities
Replies
2
Views
2K
How to calculate gamma ray energies following beta decay?
Replies
12
Views
1K
Sending drive Pulse in CQED and visualize the state by QuTip
Replies
6
Views
3K
B Prevalence of nuclear decays accompanied by gamma emission
Replies
1
Views
1K
Estimate the lifetime of the excited state that produced this line.
Replies
3
Views
7K
Determining the life time of a excited state.
Replies
3
Views
3K
What is the Uncertainty in Wavelength for an Excited Atomic State?
Replies
4
Views
17K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top