Muon radiolysis in alkali halides

In order to shed new light on the initial loss of muon spin polarization, or socalled missing fraction, which is commonly observed in non-metallic solids, we have studied muon-induced excitation in various alkali halides by measuring the luminescences associated with the radiative decay of the self-trapped excitons (STE). The result strongly suggests that the spin-exchange interaction between muonium and muon radiolysis products including STE's causes fast muon depolarization in those materials.     

Nuclear orientation of Bi isotopes in a ferromagnetic BiMn compound

A method of low-temperature nuclear orientation of bulk amount of Bi was developed utilizing a ferromagnetic compound BiMn. The radioactive isotopes of Bi,²⁰⁷Bi and²⁰⁶Bi, were oriented by this method and the hyperfine field at Bi in BiMn was determined to be ±(940 _?130 ⁺¹⁸⁰ ) kOe. No reorientation effect was observed at the isomers in²⁰⁷Pb and²⁰⁶Pb around 30 mK. The E2/M1 multipole mixing ratios of several γ-transitions in²⁰⁶Pb were determined.     

Long-lived muonium in water revealed by pulsed muons

The relaxation rate of muonium in pure water has been found to be smaller than 0.05 × 10⁶ s^?1. With the aid of pulsed muong. μSR and MuSR measurements have been carried out over a longer time range than ever achieved. The results indicate a stability of thermal muonium in water from 3 to 29°C.     

Muonium atoms observed in neopentane and tetramethylsilane

Muonium has been observed in neopentane and tetramethylsilane by a pulsed MuSR method. The probability of muonium formation was ≈ 20%, and its relaxation times were 8 and 2.6 μs for liquid neopentane and tetramethylsilane, respectively. The rate of muonium relxation has been shown to be correlated well with the dissociation energy of the CH bonding.     

Relativistic effect on magnetic moments of negative muons bound to high-Z nuclei

The g factors of the negative muons bound to Zn, Cd, and Pb nuclei have been determined. The observed values after the corrections for the internal fields have shown substantial deviations from the free-muon g factor: $\text{(g}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>free</mtext>}}\text{-g)}\text{g}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>free</mtext>}}$ is (1.3±0.6)% for Zn, (2.2±1.4) % for Cd, and (5.0±2.2)% for Pb. These shifts are in good agreement with the relativistic binding corrections for finite-size nuclei calculated by Ford et al.     

On-chip electrochemical measurement of beta-galactosidase expression using a microbial chip

[small beta]-Galactosidase expression in a small number of Escherichia coli cells has been measured in real time with an electrochemical sensor chip. E. coli cells were embedded using collagen gel within a micropore which was microfabricated onto a chip. The activity of the expressed [small beta]-galactosidase was determined using p-aminophenyl [small beta]-d-galactopyranoside (PAPG) as a substrate.     

Theory for Relative Strengths of Trapping of He+ Ions in Solid, Liquid and Gaseous Hydrogen

The study of trapping of He⁺ ion in solid hydrogen is important both as a problem in solid state physics and also as an applied physics problem in the field of muon catalyzed fusion (μCF). In μCF, He⁺ ion acts as a trap for μ⁻, interrupting the chain reaction aspect of the catalytic role of μ⁻ in producing fusion of deuteron and triton and of triton and triton in solid hydrogen composed of ²H–³H and ³H–³H molecules, respectively. Using the Hartree–Fock procedure, combined with procedures for including many-body effects, as well as relaxation effects associated with the He⁺–H₂ distances and the adjustment of the H–H separation, we have investigated the trapping of He⁺ in gaseous and solid state environments. For the former, the environment of He⁺ is simulated by a single hydrogen molecule and for the solid by clusters appropriately chosen to represent the hexagonal close-packed structure. Our results for the gaseous state indicate that the trapping is rather strong with a binding energy of 8.5 eV, with almost equal binding energy in the linear and triangular configurations with respect to the H–H direction. For the solid, both the likely sites for He⁺ trapping, namely the tetrahedral and octahedral interstitial sites, are also found to provide deep traps (8.6 eV) of almost equal strength, independent of the orientations of the neighboring molecules, showing that the trapping is not influenced by the orientational disorder in the surrounding hydrogen molecules. Further, the influence of next nearest neighbor hydrogen molecules is found to enhance the trapping energy for He⁺ substantially, by 0.6 eV, with the incorporation of the third nearest neighbors having a much smaller added effect, demonstrating the convergence of our results with respect to the size of the cluster chosen to simulate the solid. The substantial influence on the He⁺ trapping energy found for the neighbors beyond the nearest ones provides an explanation of the greater accumulation of helium in the solid state of hydrogen in μCF experiments as compared to the liquid. Suggestions are made regarding the possible reasons for the almost negligible accumulation of helium in the liquid state. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Theoretical Study of Trapping Sites for Muon in the Heme Group of Cytochrome c and Associated Shifts in Muon Spin Relaxation Frequencies

Muon Spin Relaxation (μSR) experiments are currently being conducted on the important electron transfer molecule cytochrome c (cyt c) with the goal to find out about microscopic details of the path the moving electron is taking. Simultaneously we are using the Unrestricted Hartree–Fock Cluster Procedure to determine the trapping sites for muon (μ⁺) and muonium (Mu) in the heme unit of cyt c and the associated hyperfine interactions. For the trapping sites with the highest binding energies for μ⁺, namely the nitrogen and the carbon of the pyrrole rings, we have used the available magnetic susceptibility data together with our calculated hyperfine fields to predict the Knight-shifts. At room-temperature we found 88.4 ppm and 79.0 ppm for the most attractive N- and adjacent C-site, respectively. At 150 K, these shifts increase to 172.7 ppm for the N-site and 153.7 ppm for the C-site. This revised version was published online in September 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Study of Muon-Catalyzed Fusion in Ortho–Para Controlled Solid Deuterium

Recently, the applicability of Penning trap mass spectrometry has been extended to nuclides with a half-life of less than one second. The mass of ³³Ar (T _1/2=174 ms) was measured using the ISOLTRAP spectrometer with an accuracy of 4.2 keV. This measurement provided a stringent test of the Isobaric Multiplet Mass Equation (IMME) at mass number A=33 and isospin T=3/2. The fast measurement cycle that shows the way to other measurements of very-short-lived nuclides is presented. Furthermore, the results of the IMME test are displayed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.