Energy Levels of 53Mn from the ß-Decay of 53Fe

The study of the levels of 53Mn (magic number of neutrons N = 28) is of a considerable theoretical interest. Investigations1,2 on the levels of 53Mn from the /3-decay of 53Fe lead to different conclusions about the existence of an allowed ß group feeding a level between ~ 1000 and 1500 keV, which was not observed in other experiments3-5 with nuclear reactions. The aim of the present work was to explore the above mentioned inconsistency and also to search for new ß groups in the decay of 53Fe. The existence of these groups is suggested by values of spin and parity assigned to some levels of 53Mn in nuclear reaction measurements3-5, y-ray spectroscopy tech­ niques allowing high resolution and great statistics are employed.