Abstract
Isotopes with low-lying long-lived isomers can behave very differently from other isotopes in astrophysical environments. In particular, the assumption of thermal equilibrium in computing the temperature-dependent -decay rates of such isotopes can fail below certain temperatures. We focus on the decay of since it is one of the most important isotopes in observational astrophysics and has a low-lying isomeric state; we compare and contrast these results with . We rule out recently reported effective -decay rates that showed large differences from previous calculations, finding that we agree with the earlier results. We conclude that in general, effective -decay rates should be defined separately for the ground and isomeric states at temperatures where thermal equilibrium cannot be achieved.
- Received 16 April 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.97.065807
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