Mössbauer spectroscopy
probes the properties of specific isotopic nuclei in different atomic environments by analyzing the resonant absorption of gamma rays
Mössbauer spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique based on the Mössbauer effect. This effect, discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer (sometimes written "Moessbauer", German: "Mößbauer") in 1958, consists of the nearly recoil-free emission and absorption of nuclear gamma rays in solids. The consequent nuclear spectroscopy method is exquisitely sensitive to small changes in the chemical environment of certain nuclei.
Typically, three types of nuclear interactions may be observed: the isomer shift due to differences in nearby electron densities (also called the chemical shift in older literature), quadrupole splitting due to atomic-scale electric field gradients; and magnetic splitting due to non-nuclear magnetic fields. Due to the high energy and extremely narrow line widths of nuclear gamma rays, Mössbauer spectroscopy is a highly sensitive technique in terms of energy (and hence frequency) resolution, capable of detecting changes of just a few parts in 1011.
Basic principle
Just as a gun recoils when a bullet is fired, conservation of momentum requires a nucleus (such as in a gas) to recoil during the emission or absorption of a gamma ray. If a nucleus at rest emits a gamma ray, the energy of the gamma ray is slightly less than the natural energy of the transition, but in order for a nucleus at rest to absorb a gamma ray, the gamma ray's energy must be slightly greater than the natural energy because in both cases energy is lost to recoil. This means that nuclear resonance (emission and absorption of the same gamma ray by identical nuclei) is unobservable with free nuclei because the shift in energy is too great, and the emission and absorption spectra have no significant overlap.
Nuclei in a solid crystal, however, are not free to recoil because they are bound in place in the crystal lattice. When a nucleus in a solid emits or absorbs a gamma ray, some energy can still be lost as recoil energy, but in this case, it always occurs in discrete packets called phonons (quantized vibrations of the crystal lattice).
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