Extended systematics of alpha decay half lives for exotic superheavy nuclei

TL;DR

This paper refines empirical formulas for predicting alpha decay half lives of superheavy nuclei, achieving good agreement with known data and providing predictions for 125 unknown nuclei, aiding future experimental efforts.

Contribution

It introduces a modified empirical formula for alpha decay half lives, calibrated with recent data, and compares its performance with existing formulas for superheavy nuclei.

Findings

New formula matches experimental data well

Predictions for 125 unknown superheavy nuclei

Identification of nuclei with divergent predictions

Abstract

The experimentally available data on the alpha decay half lives and Q? values for 96 superheavy nuclei are used to fix the parameters for a modified version of the Brown empirical formula through two fitting procedures which enables its comparison with similar fits using Viola-Seaborg and Royer formulas. The new expressions provide very good agreement with experimental data having fewer or the same number of parameters. All formulas with the obtained parameters are then extrapolated to generate half lives predictions for 125 unknown superheavy alpha emitters. The nuclei where the employed empirical formulas maximally or minimally diverge are pointed out and a selection of 36 nuclei with exceptional superposition of predictions was made for experimental reference.