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SYMD: Symposium SMuK Dissertation Prize 2026

SYMD 1: SMuK Dissertation Prize Symposium

SYMD 1.3: Hauptvortrag

Montag, 16. März 2026, 14:15–14:30, AudiMax

Bound-state beta decay of fully-ionised 205Tl and its impact on the early Solar System — •Guy Leckenby — LP2i Bordeaux, France

The formation of our Solar System is a question that directly impacts our understanding of our place in the universe. A defining characteristic of stellar formation is the collapse time of the gas cloud from which the star was born, and our Sun's formation time can be measured using radioactive clocks that are preserved in the first meteorites that coalesced in our Solar System. A particularly powerful isotope for this early Solar System dating is 205Pb, but to understand how much 205Pb is produced in the galaxy, one must understand an exotic type of beta-decay that only occurs for highly-charged ions: the bound-state beta decay of fully-ionised 205Tl. After 30 years of technical development, this decay was measured at the Experimental Storage Ring at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in 2020. I will present the results from this historic experiment, and explain how we used experimentally-derived stellar decay rates to validate that our Sun took 10-20 million years to form.

Keywords: nuclear astrophysics; early Solar System; bound-state beta decay; highly charged ions; heavy-ion storage rings