Search for Electron Capture in $^{176}$Lu with LYSO scintillator

Abstract: The nuclide $^{176}$Lu is one of the few naturally occurring isotopes that are potentially unstable with respect to electron capture (EC). Although experimental evidence for $^{176}$Lu EC decay is still missing, this isotope is instead well known to $\beta^-$ decay into $^{176}$Hf with an half-life of about 38 Gyr. The precise investigation of all $^{176}$Lu possible decay modes is interesting because the Lu/Hf ratio is adopted as an isotopic clock. Previous searches for the $^{176}$Lu EC decay were performed by using a passive Lutetium source coupled with an HP-Ge spectrometer. Our approach uses a LYSO crystal both as Lutetium source and as an active detector. Scintillation light from the LYSO crystal is acquired in coincidence with the signals from the HP-Ge detector, this allows a powerful suppression of the background sourcing from the well known $\beta^-$ decay branch. This coincidence approach led to an improvement on the $^{176}$Lu EC branching ratio limits by a factor 3 to 30, depending on the considered EC channel.