Small broadening of the Mössbauer gamma line of the isomer ^109mAg as yet another indication of the protracted character of the emission of photons from nuclei and their absorption

Abstract

Nine experiments performed to date by three research groups in order to observe the Mössbauer effect in the case of gamma rays emitted by the long-lived isomer ^109mAg yielded results suggesting an anomalously small broadening of the Mössbauer gamma line of this isomer. In turn, this indicates that the emission of photons from nuclei and their resonance absorption cannot proceed within a time interval much shorter than the characteristic time of the change in the energy of hyperfine dipole—dipole interaction, because the photon energy would otherwise be determined by the sum of the instantaneous value of the energy of this interaction and the nuclear-transition energy, in which case the broadening of the Mössbauer gamma line would reach five to six orders of magnitude, as opposed to one to two orders of magnitude broadening observed experimentally.