New measurements of ⁷¹Ge decay: Impact on the gallium anomaly

A dedicated high-statistics measurement of the Ge-71 half-life is found to be in accurate agreement with an accepted value of 11.43 +/- 0.03 d, eliminating a recently proposed route to bypass the "gallium anomaly" affecting several neutrino experiments. Our data also severely constrain the possibility of Ge-71 decay to low-energy excited levels of the Ga-71 daughter nucleus as a solution to this puzzle. Additional unpublished measurements of this decay are discussed. Following the incorporation of this information, the gallium anomaly survives with high statistical significance.