Predicting β-decay rates of radioisotopes embedded in anisotropic ECR plasmas

Studying in-plasma decay rates as a function of ionic charge state distribution (CSD) is the fundamental objective of the PANDORA project. To this effect, we present here two theoretical models to calculate β-decay lifetimes of radionuclide ions embedded in an energetic electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma, starting from anisotropic electron distributions. The first model -designed as separate modules to implement various atomic processes like electron-ion reactions, ion-ion charge exchange collisions and ion loss dynamics sequentially- serves as a predecessor to a more robust second model aimed at coupling ion population kinetics with complex transport phenomena in an ECR plasma. The outputs from the models -in the form of space-resolved CSD and level populations- can be fed to an appropriate code based on known theories connecting atomic level configurations to decay lifetime to calculate the position-dependent β-decay rate.