Chiral three-nucleon interaction and the carbon-14 dating beta decay

Understand

We present a shell model calculation for the beta decay of 14-C to the 14-N ground-state, treating the relevant nuclear states as two 0p-holes in an 16-O core.

• Employing the universal low-momentum nucleon-nucleon potential V(low-k) only, one finds that the Gamow-Teller matrix element is too large to describe the known (very long) lifetime of 14-C.
• As a novel approach to the problem, we invoke the chiral three-nucleon force (3NF) at leading order and derive from it a density-dependent in-medium NN interaction.
• Including this effective in-medium NN interaction, the Gamow-Teller matrix element vanishes for a nuclear density close to that of saturated nuclear matter.