Dark energy and the Rutherford-Soddy radiative decay law

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dark energy coupling to fundamental interactions could alter nuclear decay laws, finding that current bounds restrict deviations mainly for weak interactions, while strong interactions remain less constrained.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Bekenstein-type model to analyze the impact of dark energy on nuclear decay laws, highlighting the importance of parameter bounds for deviations.

Findings

Weak interaction bounds exclude significant deviations

Strong interaction bounds are less restrictive

Dark energy coupling can cause measurable deviations if parameters are not tightly constrained

Abstract

It is shown that a putative evolution of the fundamental couplings of strong and weak interactions via coupling to dark energy through a generalized Bekenstein-type model may, for a linear model of variation, cause deviations on the statistical nuclear decay Rutherford-Soddy law unless bounds are imposed on the parameters of this variation. Existing bounds for the weak interaction exclude any significant deviation. Bounds on the strong interaction are much less stringent.