Rare 40K Decay with Implications for Fundamental Physics and Geochronology

Abstract

Potassium-40 is a widespread, naturally occurring isotope whose radioactivity impacts subatomic rare-event searches, nuclear structure theory, and estimated geological ages. A predicted electron-capture decay directly to the ground state of argon-40 has never been observed. The KDK (potassium decay) collaboration reports strong evidence of this rare decay mode. A blinded analysis reveals a nonzero ratio of intensities of ground-state electron-captures (IEC0) over excited-state ones (IEC∗) of IEC0/IEC∗=0.0095stat±0.0022sys±0.0010 (68% C.L.), with the null hypothesis rejected at 4σ. In terms of branching ratio, this signal yields IEC0=0.098%stat±0.023%sys±0.010%, roughly half of the commonly used prediction, with consequences for various fields [L. Hariasz et al., companion paper, Phys. Rev. C 108, 014327 (2023)].