New experimental values for the Th-229m isomer energy and lifetime

The Th-229 nuclear isomer has been around for more than 40 years already, but two of its main properties, namely its energy and lifetime, are known only with very large error margins. While there is no experimental value for the bare isomer lifetime at all, there is at least some consensus on the isomer energy (somewhere between 6.3 and 10 eV). In their recent study (now available on the arXiv preprint server here), the Russian group at MEPhI suggests an energy of 7.1 eV and a lifetime of about half an hour for the bare isomer. These values are in agreement with all recent experiments, which is very good news. And it’s the first time since the Beck et al. measurement (more than 10 years ago !) that a research team dares to put forward a value of the isomer energy. Let’s hope that an independent experiment using a different approach will soon be able to confirm this value. Congratulations to the Russian team for their work!