Can temperature affect radioactive decay?

[Gibsons]

Was just noodling about and didn't know the answer to this, nor did a quick Google provide an answer.

Most radioactive decay is unaffected by temperature as it's a nuclear process and the energy of the electrons associated with the nucleus doesn't really matter.

But in k-capture, an electron is 'absorbed' into the nucleus. Intuitively it seems to me that cooling the atoms down might lead to a higher chance of the electron being captured as it will be at a lower energy state and therefore spend more time closer to the nucleus. conversely, heating it up will lead the electrons to higher energy states and if hot enough cause the electrons to leave the immediate vicinity (but this is mostly just the outer electrons, I assume it's the inner shells that get captured most often). Anyway, the question: can temperature affect the rate of k-capture, and if so, how much of an effect are we talking about, how much a change in temp is needed to see the effect, etc???

 

[cquark]

I'm not sure about the answer to your question about k-capture, but extreme temperatures of around 100GeV will change decay rates, as the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces will unify into a single electroweak force. The weakness of the weak force is a result of the huge mass of the bosons that transmit the force; unlike the electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces, which are transmitted via zero-mass photons and gluons respectively, the weak force is transmitted by W and Z bosons, which have masses of around 80 and 90 GeV respectively. Once the temperature is around 100GeV, the weak force is no longer weak compared to electromagnetism and decay rates will be much higher.

 

[cirthix]

Originally posted by: cquark
I'm not sure about the answer to your question about k-capture, but extreme temperatures of around 100GeV will change decay rates, as the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces will unify into a single electroweak force. The weakness of the weak force is a result of the huge mass of the bosons that transmit the force; unlike the electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces, which are transmitted via zero-mass photons and gluons respectively, the weak force is transmitted by W and Z bosons, which have masses of around 80 and 90 GeV respectively. Once the temperature is around 100GeV, the weak force is no longer weak compared to electromagnetism and decay rates will be much higher.

source please

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: cirthix

Originally posted by: cquark
I'm not sure about the answer to your question about k-capture, but extreme temperatures of around 100GeV will change decay rates, as the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces will unify into a single electroweak force. The weakness of the weak force is a result of the huge mass of the bosons that transmit the force; unlike the electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces, which are transmitted via zero-mass photons and gluons respectively, the weak force is transmitted by W and Z bosons, which have masses of around 80 and 90 GeV respectively. Once the temperature is around 100GeV, the weak force is no longer weak compared to electromagnetism and decay rates will be much higher.

source please

Any introductory particle physics textbook, such as Halzen and Martin, or you could read Weinberg and Salaam's original papers on electroweak unification.