Mesonic Decay of an Ejected Triton

Abstract

A heavy fragment is ejected from a star of type $21+5p$ which decays at rest into three charged particles. Gap counts indicate that the ejected fragment is singly charged and heavier than a proton. The mass of the particle, as estimated by constant sagitta scattering along its range of 1330 microns, is 2.93±1.36 proton masses. All three secondary particles terminate their range, and one of them can be identified as a negative pi meson of 26.6±0.9 Mev kinetic energy. Two short recoil tracks, if assumed to be protons, have kinetic energies of 1.43±0.04 and 2.31±0.15 Mev, respectively. Momentum balance applied to several decay schemes suggest that the event probably represents ${\mathrm{H}}^{3*}\to {\mathrm{H}}^1+{\mathrm{H}}^1+n^0+{\pi }^{-}+Q=31.5\mathrm{}\pm 1$ Mev. The binding energy of the excited triton is found to be 5.4±1 Mev, less than that of the normal triton (8.48 Mev). The time of flight of the excited triton is 4.2×${10}^{-11\mathrm{}}$ sec.