The half-life of radiocarbon (14C) is 5700 ± 30 yr, which makes it particularly useful for dating in archaeology. However, only an exceptional hindrance of the beta decay from 14C to 14N—a so-called Gamow-Teller ß-decay—makes this half-life so long. A normal strength would result in a half-life of only a few days, completely useless for archaeological dating. The unusual hindrance is based on the nuclear structure of the two nuclei, resulting in strongly destructive interferences of the nuclear transition matrix element. Nuclear model calculation with great computational efforts have been performed in the literature to reproduce the very low transition probability. Here, we will attempt to describe the nuclear physics behind this most unusual half-life.

中文翻译：

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14C的半衰期——为什么这么长？

放射性碳的半衰期（14C) 是 5700 ± 30 年，这使得它在考古学中特别有用。然而，从14C到14N——所谓的 Gamow-Teller ß-衰变——使这个半衰期如此之长。正常的强度会导致只有几天的半衰期，对于考古测年完全没有用。不寻常的阻碍是基于两个原子核的核结构，导致核过渡基质元素的强破坏性干扰。在文献中已经进行了具有巨大计算努力的核模型计算以再现非常低的转变概率。在这里，我们将尝试描述这个最不寻常的半衰期背后的核物理。