An effect occurring when certain nuclides decay with emission of gamma radiation. For an isolated nucleus, the gamma radiation would usually have a spread of energies because the energy of the process is partitioned between the gamma-ray photon and the recoil energy of the nucleus. In 1957 Rudolph Mössbauer (1929–2011) found that in certain solids, in which the emitting nucleus is held by strong forces in the lattice, the recoil energy is taken up by the whole lattice. Since this may typically contain 1010–1020 atoms, the recoil energy is negligible and the energy of the emitted photon is sharply defined in a very narrow energy spread.
The effect is exploited in Mössbauer spectroscopy in which a gamma-ray source is mounted on a moving platform and a similar sample is mounted nearby. A detector measures gamma rays scattered by the sample. The source is moved slowly towards the sample at a varying speed, so as to continuously change the frequency of the emitted gamma radiation by the Doppler effect. A sharp decrease in the signal from the detector at a particular speed (i.e. frequency) indicates resonance absorption in the sample nuclei. The effect is used to investigate nuclear energy levels. In chemistry, Mössbauer spectroscopy can also give information about the bonding and structure of compounds because chemical shifts in the resonance energy are produced by the presence of surrounding atoms.