Influence of the Pauli exclusion principle on the alpha decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Pauli exclusion principle influences alpha decay half-lives in heavy nuclei by modifying nucleon-nucleon interactions and the double-folding formalism, leading to improved agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the Pauli exclusion principle to renormalize interactions and modify the double-folding formalism for more accurate alpha decay half-life predictions.

Findings

Reduced standard deviation in half-life calculations from 0.340 to 0.309.

Enhanced consistency with experimental data when including kinetic energy contributions.

Demonstrated the significance of Pauli exclusion effects in nuclear decay modeling.

Abstract

In this study, the effects of repulsive nucleon-nucleon interactions arising from the Pauli exclusion principle were examined regarding the half-lives of heavy even-even nuclei with $84\leq Z\leq92$. The Pauli exclusion principle is applied to our investigations by renormalizing the nucleon-nucleon interactions according to the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition. It is also applied to the double-folding ($DF$) formalism as a modification term by investigating the kinetic energy variation at the overlapping regions between the densities of the alpha and daughter nuclei. The standard deviation for the calculated half-lives from their corresponded experimental data is 0.340 for the renormalized DF formalism. Its value reduces to 0.309 for the DF formalism modified with the kinetic energy contribution estimated by the extended Thomas-Fermi approach. The calculated $\alpha$ decay half-lives are more consistent with experimental data if the kinetic energy contribution is associated with the DF formalism.