On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 7:24 AM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote:
Eric, if the photons were to be emitted in random directions by the excited > He4, then little kinetic energy would be imparted upon the nucleus. I > suspect this is what you are referring to. > Perhaps; I'm not sure. I had in mind something like this: an excited [dd]* or [pNi]* state is like a capacitor that will discharge. In a vacuum it will discharge either by emitting a gamma, which takes a while, or by breaking apart, which happens more quickly. But at the surface of or within a few layers of a metal like nickel, there is an environment rich in electrostatic charge, provided by the electrons and the lattice sites (sometimes called "ion cores," since they're positively charged). If the [pNi]* excited state discharges like a capacitor within this environment with all of the electrostatic charge, I'm assuming there will be electromagnetic coupling between the excited state and the electrostatic sources, in the sense that they will form a system and interact. There will be a strong repulsive force given off by the [pNi]* state as it decays to whatever it decays to (for example, 63Cu), and this repulsive force will push away the nearby electrons and ion cores. The more it pushes away the electrons, the more you'll get a bath of photons. The more it pushes away the ion cores, the more kinetic energy will be imparted to the daughter of the decay. This is because electrons are nearly massless, and so receive the majority of the impulse, while the ion cores have a mass nearly equal to the daughter, and so push back on the resulting daughter much more than the electrons. I am not yet sure how the electromagnetic interaction relates to spin coupling, although I think Bob sees something in this. Eric
