I wrote: Even a year ago I was persuaded that there must be some kind of high-energy > gamma downconversion at play ... >
Just to clarify -- I do think the full energy of a nuclear transition, when there is one, is being dissipated to the environment, but not through some kind of harmonic oscillation with phonons or something similar, and especially not through the formation of a gamma followed by some kind of tennis game that downconverts it after it has been emitted. My working hypothesis is that the nuclear transition energy is being dumped all in one go across numerous charge carriers in the neighborhood of the interaction when it takes place in a strong Coulomb field. Eric
