Beta decay of 62Ga -: art. no. 015501

We report a study of the beta decay of Ga-62, whose dominant branch is a superallowed 0(+)-->0(+) transition to the ground state of Zn-62. We find the total half-life to be 115.84+/-0.25 ms. This is the first time that the Ga-62 half-life has been measured with a purified source. We find that (0.120+/-0.021)% of the beta decays are followed by gamma cascades that pass through the Zn-62 2(+) first excited state at 0.954 MeV. The branching ratio to the first-excited 0(+) state in Zn-62 at 2.33 MeV is <0.043%. We conclude that the branching ratio for the superallowed transition is 99.85(-0.15)(+0.05)%.