Ultra-short lifetime isomer studies from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense γ-ray

Isomers, ubiquitous populations of relatively long-lived nuclear excited states, play a crucial role in nuclear physics. However, isomers with half-life times of several seconds or less barely had experimental cross section data due to the lack of a suitable measuring method. We report a method of online γ spectroscopy for ultra-short-lived isomers from photonuclear reactions using laser-driven ultra-intense γ-rays. The fastest time resolution can reach sub-ps level with γ-ray intensities >10^19/s (⩾ 8 MeV). The ^115In(γ, n)^114m2In reaction (T_1/2 = 43.1 ms) was first measured in the high-energy region which shed light on the nuclear structure studies of In element. Simulations showed it would be an efficient way to study ^229mTh (T_1/2 = 7 μs), which is believed to be the next generation of nuclear clock. This work offered a unique way of gaining insight into ultra-short lifetimes and promised an effective way to fill the gap in relevant experimental data.