Evidence for correlations between fluctuations in 54Mn decay rates and solar storms

Following recent indications that several radioactive isotopes show fluctuating decay rates which may be influenced by solar activity, we present findings from a 2 year period of data collection on 54Mn. Measurements were recorded hourly from a 1 μCi sample of 54Mn monitored from January 2010–December 2011. A series of signal-detection algorithms determine regions of statistically significant fluctuations in decay behaviour from the expected exponential form. The 239 decay flags identified during this interval were compared to daily distributions of multiple solar indices, generated by noaa, which are associated with heightened solar activity. The indices were filtered to provide a list of the 413 strongest events during a coincident period. We find that 49% of the strongest solar events are preceded by at least 1 decay flag within a 48 h interval, and 37% of decay flags are followed by a reported solar event within 48 h. These results are significant at the 0.9σ and 2.8σ levels respectively, based on a comparison to results obtained from a shuffle test, in which the decay measurements were randomly shuffled in time 10,000 times. We also present results from a simulation combining constructed data reflecting 10 sites which compared and filtered decay flags generated from all sites. The results indicate a potential 35% reduction in the false positive rate in going from 1 to 10 sites. By implication, the improved statistics attest to the benefit of analysing data from a larger number of geographically distributed sites in parallel.