Independent check of sporadic beta decay anomalies reported earlier by Parkhomov

Abstract

A. Parkhomov reported in the past the detection of strong, short, sporadic, nearly everyday decay rate increases in $\beta$-isotopes placed at the focus of a concave mirror directed at a clear sky. He interpreted this effect as neutrino-induced decay. These neutrinos were assumed to be slow and arrive from space in the form of gravitationally collimated beams. We precisely replicated this experiment for the purpose of independent verification. We recorded about 50 days of data employing Geiger-counter-based signal and control detectors, $^{40}$K and $^{90}$Sr/$^{90}$Y isotopes as $\beta$-sources. We did not detect any significant difference between the data from signal and control detectors, both datasets obeyed the standard Poissonian process. Thus, we robustly excluded the hypothesized new effect. We suspect that A. Parkhomov was just misled by a trivial electromagnetic instability of his setup.