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Isotopes of ytterbium

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ618142 ↗
Source-derived summary

Naturally occurring ytterbium (70Yb) is composed of seven stable isotopes: 168Yb, 170Yb–174Yb, and 176Yb, with 174Yb being the most abundant (31.90% natural abundance). 30 radioisotopes have been characterized, with the most stable being 169Yb with a half-life of 32.014 days, 175Yb with a half-life of 4.185 days, and 166Yb with a half-life of 56.7 hours. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 2 hours, with the majority of them being less than 20 minutes. This element also has 18 meta states, with the most stable being 169mYb (half-life 46 seconds).

The known isotopes of ytterbium range from 149Yb to 189Yb. The primary decay mode before the most abundant stable isotope, 174Yb is electron capture giving thulium isotopes; the primary mode after is beta emission giving lutetium isotopes. Of interest to modern quantum optics, the different ytterbium isotopes follow either Bose–Einstein statistics or Fermi–Dirac statistics, leading to different behavior in optical lattices.

List of isotopes

See also

Daughter products other than ytterbium

Isotopes of lutetium

Isotopes of thulium

Isotopes of erbium

References

Isotope masses from:

Audi, Georges; Bersillon, Olivier; Blachot, Jean; Wapstra, Aaldert Hendrik (2003), "The NUBASE evaluation of nuclear and decay properties", Nuclear Physics A, 729: 3–128, Bibcode:2003NuPhA.729....3A, doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2003.11.001

Isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from:

de Laeter, John Robert; Böhlke, John Karl; De Bièvre, Paul; Hidaka, Hiroshi; Peiser, H. Steffen; Rosman, Kevin J. R.; Taylor, Philip D. P. (2003). "Atomic weights of the elements. Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report)".

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Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 1016, 2000—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Isotopes, ytterbium and Open-knowledge providing the first useful test.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q618142. The Library of Congress control number is sh85149407. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1016 and 2000.

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This entry incorporates text from “Isotopes of ytterbium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.