Charge Conservation and the Lifetime of the Electron

Abstract

New lower limits on the electron lifetime have been set by experiments sensitive to two kinds of noncharge-conserving decay processes for orbital electrons. The lifetime of the $K$ electrons in iodine for a process without photons among the decay products has been shown to be >2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{21}$ yr and the lifetime for the process ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{e}+\ensuremath{\gamma}$ to be >4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{22}$ yr.