Study of neutrino-recoil produced point defects in InSb by 119Sn Moessbauer spectroscopy

We have utilized the electron-capture decay of 119gTe to 119Sb to produce isolated single Frenkel pairs in InSb. This effect is caused by the neutrino emission in the decay process which imparts a monoenergetic recoil of 12 eV to the 119Sb atoms, thereby displacing about 20% of them to interstitial sites. Two distinct interstitial components can be observed. The process is traced by Moessbauer emission spectroscopy following the decay of 119Sb to 119Sn. The displacement threshold Ed is confined to 6 eV<Ed<12 eV from auxiliary experiments employing 119mTe isotopes. (orig.)