The Fermi matrix elements inferred from β-γ(CP) correlation measurements in Fe decay

Measurements have been made of the β-γ circular-polarization correlation paramter A for the 273 keV β-branch in the decay of ⁵⁹Fe. It has recently been established that each of the principal β-branches of ⁵⁹Fe involves ΔJ=0 and thus has a possible non-zero Fermi matrix element M_F which can be determined from the ƒt value and A. Previous β-γ (_CP) measurements on this nucleide have all employed the usual γ-ray scattering technique. This method is suitable for the 475 keV β-branch but does not produce an accurate measurement of the lower energy branch because of energy discrimination difficulties. A transmission polarimeter with γ-discrimination has been used in the present work to obtain clean data on the 273 keV β-1.29 MeV γ-cascade. Calibration with ⁶⁰Co (1.33 MeV) and ²⁸Al (1.79 MeV) yielded A = −0.154±0.023. This gives for the isospin impurity coefficient and the effective Coulomb matrix element of the 1.29 MeV state (1.1±1.4) × 10⁻³ and 9±11 keV, respectively.