Rosatom delivered unique samples of the zirconium-96 isotope (Zr-96) to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, in Dubna, Moscow Region) for international research in the fields of physics, cosmology and astrophysics.
The Zr-96 isotope, produced at JSC PA ECP (an enterprise of Rosatom), will be used, in particular, to study fundamental neutrino particles. According to Evgeny Yakushev, Head of the Department of Nuclear Spectrometry and Radiochemistry at DLNP JINR, a unique sample of enriched Zr-96 will allow searching for the so-called neutrinoless mode of double beta decay of this isotope at new sensitivity levels.
“Spectrometric searches for the neutrinoless mode of double beta decay connect nuclear physics with astrophysics and cosmology. The existence of such a decay mode will shed light on the very fact of the existence of our Universe, which became possible due to a slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter. A number of theoretical models explaining this asymmetry require a different, Majorana mechanism for acquiring neutrino mass, which makes neutrinoless decay possible. This mechanism for neutrinos is perhaps fundamentally different from all other known particles, whose mass is known to arise when interacting with the Higgs field. This is a completely new and interesting physics,” Yakushev said.
In the near future, JINR plans to conduct a study of the purity of the delivered isotope samples with subsequent publication of the results. If the high quality is confirmed, Zr-96 can be in demand by various international scientific projects, and the possible total sales volume will be up to tens of kilograms per year.
Zirconium-96 is an unstable isotope of zirconium with a very long half-life, approximately 200,000 times the age of the universe. In natural zirconium, the proportion of Zr-96 is about 2.8%. The decay of zirconium-96, the so-called double beta decay, accompanied by an increase in the nuclear charge by two units and the emission of two electrons, is the rarest of all radioactive decay processes.
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