Abstract: Background: The Gamow-Teller response of Ar-40 is important for the use of liquid argon as a medium for neutrino detection. An ambiguity about the Gamow-Teller strength for the excitation of 1(+) states at 2290 and 2730 keV in K-40 results in a significant uncertainty for neutrino capture rates. This ambiguity is caused by the large discrepancy observed between strengths extracted from Ar-40(p, n) charge-exchange data and the transition strengths for the analog transitions studied in the beta decay of Ti-40. Purpose: This study was aimed at resolving the ambiguity between the results from the Ar-40(p, n) charge-exchange and Ti-40 beta-decay data. Method: Shell-model calculations in the sd-pf shell with a new interaction (WBMB-C) were used to study differences between the structure of the transitions from Ar-40 and Ti-40. Distorted-wave Born approximation reaction calculations were used to investigate uncertainties in the extraction of Gamow-Teller strength from the Ar-40(p, n) data. New high-resolution data for the Ar-40(He-3,t) reaction were used to gain further insight into the charge-exchange reaction mechanism and to provide more information to test the validity of the shell-model calculations. Results: The shell-model calculations showed that interference between amplitudes associated with pf and sd components to the low-lying Gamow-Teller transitions, in combination with a difference in Coulomb energy shifts for Ar-40 and Ti-40, can produce the differences on the scale of those observed between the Ar-40 charge-exchange and Ti-40 beta-decay data. In combination with the difference in nuclear penetrability of the (p, n) and (He-3,t) probes, the different contributions from amplitudes associated with transitions in the pf and sd shells are likely also responsible for the observed discrepancy between the ratio of the cross sections for the low-lying 1(+) states in the Ar-40(p, n) and Ar-40(He-3,t) data. Conclusions: On the basis of this study, it is recommended to use Gamow-Teller strengths extracted from the Ar-40(p, n) data, not the Ti-40 beta-decay data, for the calculation of neutrino capture rates. Further theoretical studies are required to achieve a consistent quantitative description for the energy differences between low-lying 1(+) states in K-40 and Sc-40 and the experimentally observed Gamow-Teller strengths.

Abstract: The neutron-induced fission cross section of U-234 has been measured at the CERN nTOF facility relative to the standard fission cross section of U-235 from 20 keV to 1.4 MeV and of U-238 from 1.4 to 200 MeV. A fast ionization chamber (FIC) was used as a fission fragment detector with a detection efficiency of no less than 97%. The high instantaneous flux and the low background characterizing the nTOF facility resulted in wide-energy-range data (0.02 to 200 MeV), with high energy resolution, high statistics, and systematic uncertainties bellow 3%. Previous investigations around the energy of the fission threshold revealed structures attributed to beta-vibrational levels, which have been confirmed by the present measurements. Theoretical calculations have been performed, employing the TALYS code with model parameters tuned to fairly reproduce the experimental data.

Abstract: The fragmentation of relativistic uranium projectiles has been exploited at the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung laboratory to investigate the beta decay of neutron-rich nuclei just beyond Pb-208. This paper reports on beta-delayed gamma decays of Tl211-213, Pb-215, and Bi215-219 de-exciting states in the daughters Pb211-213, Bi-215, and Po215-219. The resulting partial level schemes, proposed with the help of systematics and shell-model calculations, are presented. The role of allowed Gamow-Teller and first-forbidden beta transitions in this mass region is discussed.