Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The charge state distribution following the positron decay of 21Na has been measured, with a larger than expected fraction of the daughter 21Ne in positive charge states. No dependence on either the positron or recoil nucleus energy is observed. The data is compared to a simple model based on the sudden approximation. Calculations suggest a small but important contribution from recoil ionization has important consequences for precision beta decay correlation experiments detecting recoil ions.