New approach for alpha decay half-lives of superheavy nuclei and applicability of WKB approximation

Jianmin Dong, Wei Zuo, Werner Scheid

Published 2011-11-02Version 1

The alpha decay half-lives of recently synthesized superheavy nuclei (SHN) are calculated by applying a new approach which estimates them with the help of their neighbors based on some simple formulas. The estimated half-life values are in very good agreement with the experimental ones, indicating the reliability of the experimental observations and measurements to a large extent as well as the predictive power of our approach. The second part of this work is to test the applicability of the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation for the quantum mechanical tunneling probability. We calculated the accurate barrier penetrability for alpha decay along with proton and cluster radioactivity by numerically solving Schr\"odinger equation. The calculated results are compared with those of the WKB method to find that WKB approximation works well for the three physically analogical decay modes.