Recent developments in radioactive charged-particle emissions and related phenomena

TL;DR

This review discusses recent experimental and theoretical advances in radioactive charged-particle emissions, including alpha, proton, and cluster decays, highlighting new discoveries, nuclear structure insights, and progress in nuclear many-body theories.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent developments in understanding charged-particle decays and clustering phenomena in unstable nuclei, integrating experimental findings with microscopic theoretical models.

Findings

Recent detection of charged-particle decays from proton-rich nuclei near the proton drip line.

Advances in microscopic nuclear models enabling detailed study of cluster formation.

Identification of nuclear interaction effects, like pairing, on cluster properties.

Abstract

The advent and intensive use of new detector technologies as well as radioactive ion beam facilities have opened up possibilities to investigate alpha, proton and cluster decays of highly unstable nuclei. This article provides a review of the current status of our understanding of clustering and the corresponding radioactive particle decay process in atomic nuclei. We put alpha decay in the context of charged-particle emissions which also include one- and two-proton emissions as well as heavy cluster decay. The experimental as well as the theoretical advances achieved recently in these fields are presented. Emphasis is given to the recent discoveries of charged-particle decays from proton-rich nuclei around the proton drip line. Those decay measurements have shown to provide an important probe for studying the structure of the nuclei involved. Developments on the theoretical side in nuclear many-body theories and supercomputing facilities have also made substantial progress, enabling one to study the nuclear clusterization and decays within a microscopic and consistent framework. We report on properties induced by the nuclear interaction acting in the nuclear medium, like the pairing interaction, which have been uncovered by studying the microscopic structure of clusters. The competition between cluster formations as compared to the corresponding alpha-particle formation are included. In the review we also describe the search for super-heavy nuclei connected by chains of alpha and other radioactive particle decays.