Atomic Excitation in Beta-Decay

The excitation and ionization of the daughter atom coming from a beta-decay, which is of interest in connection with some hot atom studies and possibly also in connection with beta-recoil experiments, is the subject of an introductory discussion (Secs. 1, 3, 4, and 5) with explicit calculations given only in the case of one-electron hydrogenlike wave function representation of atomic states (Sec. 2). The latter correct results in the literature, the only ones so far published on this subject. The present discussion is confined to direct effects of the beta-process itself and does not evaluate those resulting from Auger processes (Sec. 5).