Systematic research on α-decay rates of spherical and deformed nuclei

Systematic study of α decay of nuclei around the Z=82, N=126 shell closures within the cluster-formation model and proximity potential 1977 formalism

“…In 1928, the phenomenon of α decay for nuclei was independently explained by Gurney and Condon [1] and Gamow [2] using the quantum tunnel theory. Since then, α decay has long been perceived as one of the most powerful tools to investigate unstable nuclei, neutron-deficient nuclei and superheavy nuclei, and has been an active area of research of nuclear physics [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Alpha Decay and Beta-Delayed Fission: Tools for Nuclear Physics Studies

“…However, as will be discussed further, the basic linear log(T 1/2 ) versus Q −1/2 α dependence, deduced from systematic studies remains (see e.g. [22][23][24]). …”

“…Following the description of [38,33,39], the key ingredient is a careful evaluation of the formation amplitude that represents an overlap integral of the parent α-decaying state with the daughter nucleus coupled to an α particle [39,25]. Several methods have been developed and applied to describe the α-decay process from a microscopic view point, including deformed nuclei [40], but a detailed review of such efforts is outside the scope of the present lecture notes and we refer the reader to [33,41,24]. One general conclusion from these works is that they support the large degree of clusterisation happening inside the nucleus which explains the success of the semi-classical approaches where cluster formation is implicitly assumed.…”

“…The fission and total decay widths of the daughter, after β decay, are respectively given by Γ f and Γ tot . Equation (24) can be combined with equation (25) to deduce the decay constant of βDF, defined as λ βDF = ln(2)/T 1/2,βDF , as…”

“…1, gives all the ingredients necessary to discuss the α-decay process. The tunneling probability can be calculated using different levels of complexity in the assumed potentials (see for example [10,11] and for a recent review see [24]). Following [26] and neglecting the centrifugal barrier, thus only considering l α =0, the potential can be written as…”