Molecular Final-State Interactions in Triton β Decay

Abstract

The lowest order correction to the sudden approximation is formulated for the molecular transition amplitude in triton decay by taking account of the Coulomb interaction of the ejected β ray with residual charged particles. The effect is of the order of (α⁄β_e)² with β_e the β-electron velocity. The transition probabilities for propane are explicitly calculated by an ab initio SCF–MO method and the modification is shown to be at most 0.6% for those in the sudden approximation.