Velocity distribution in Recoil-Distance Doppler-Shift experiments

The Recoil-Distance Doppler-Shift (RDDS) or Plunger technique is a well established method to measure lifetimes of excited nuclear states in the pico-second range. In standard RDDS experiments, the velocities of the nuclei of interest emerging from a usually thin target foil are distributed around a mean velocity v ¯ = 〈 v 〉 v with a relatively narrow width and it is sufficient to assume that all nuclei move with the average velocity. In this paper we investigate the influence of a broader velocity distribution especially for lifetimes τ determined using the DDCM and its basic relation τ = − ( R ( x ) − R feed ( x ) ) / ( d R ( x ) / d x ) v and simulated experimental data (R(x) decay curve of the level of interest, R feed ( x ) feeding decay curves). It turned out that it is favorable to use 〈 1 / v 〉 v instead of 1 / 〈 v 〉 v . Further, deviations from the correct lifetimes practically vanish at target to stopper separations close to the maximum amplitude of the function d R ( x ) / d x . As a consequence in a plunger experiment target-to-stopper separations should be selected symmetrically around the maximum amplitude of the function d R ( x ) / d x in order to minimize the effect of a broad velocity distribution.