Studies of charged particle emission in the decay of Fe-45

The decay of extremely neutron-deficient isotope Fe-45 has been studied by using a new type of gaseous detector in which a technique of optical imaging is used to record tracks of charged particles. The two-proton radioactivity and the beta-decay channels accompanied by proton(s) emission were clearly identified. For the first time, the angular and energy correlations between two protons emitted from the Fe-45 ground-state were measured. The obtained distributions were confronted with predictions of a three-body model. Studies of beta-decay channels of Fe-45 provided first unambiguous evidence for the beta-delayed three proton emission.