Concerning the phases of the annual variations of nuclear decay rates

Abstract

Recent analyses of data sets acquired at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt both show evidence of pronounced annual variations, suggestive of a solar influence. However, the phases of decay-rate maxima do not correspond precisely to the phase of minimum Sun-Earth distance, as might then be expected. We here examine the hypothesis that decay rates are influenced by an unknown solar radiation, but that the intensity of the radiation is influenced not only by the variation in Sun-Earth distance, but also by a possible north-south asymmetry in the solar emission mechanism. We find that this can lead to phases of decay-rate maxima in the range 0-0.183 or 0.683-1 (September 6 to March 8) but that, according to this hypothesis, phases in the range of 0.183-0.683 (March 8 to September 6) are "forbidden." We find that phases of the three data sets analyzed here fall in the allowed range. © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.