Has anyone considered using the excited meta-state of Rh 102 to create a gamma-ray laser?. I see an advantage in favor of using Rh 102m extracted from nuclear waste over Hf 178m2. While Rh 102m has a reasonably long half-life of 3.7 years, this is also much longer than the half-life of the ground state with a half-life of 207 days, guaranteeing population inversion after sufficient time even if the original sample of Rh 102 was in a non-inverted mixture of both states. Since the ground state Rh 102 decays into Ru 102 or Pd 102 the decay products can be removed chemically to obtain a gain medium which is mostly in the Rh 102m state. This is different from the situation with Hf 178m2 where population inversion is guaranteed by the very short lifetime of Hf 178m but there appears to be no way to separate the excited state Hf 178m2 from the ground state, meaning its hard to create a fairly pure sample in the excited state, which is crucial for obtaining a gain factor>1 which is needed for laser action.
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