Time-dependent Dirac equation applied to one-proton radioactive emission

TL;DR

This paper develops a time-dependent Dirac formalism to simulate one-proton radioactivity, providing insights into relativistic quantum tunneling and improving predictions for proton-emitting nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces a novel TD-Dirac calculation method for proton emission, integrating relativistic effects into nuclear decay modeling.

Findings

Calculated proton emission energies align with experimental data.

Sensitivity analysis shows system size impacts emission properties.

Method demonstrates potential for broader application to proton-rich nuclei.

Abstract

Relativistic energy-density functional (REDF) theory has been developed and utilized for self-consistent meanfield calculations of atomic nuclei. The proton-emitting radioactivity can provide a suitable reference to improve the predicting ability of REDF especially on the proton-drip line. One needs to consider the quantum tunneling effect, which plays an essential role in nucleon-emitting radioactive processes. However, the relativistic quantum tunneling has been less investigated compared with the non-relativistic case. This work is devoted to a theoretical evaluation of one-proton ($1p$) radioactivity based on the relativistic Dirac formalism. For this purpose, I develop the time-dependent (TD) Dirac-spinor calculation to simulate the $1p$ emission. By utilizing the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov (RHB) calculation with the DD-PCX parameters, single-proton potentials for the time-dependent Dirac spinor are determined. The TD-Dirac calculation is applied to the $1p$ emissions from the $^{37}$Sc and $^{39}$Sc nuclei, which can be well approximated as the valence proton and the proton-close-shell cores. The sensitivity of $1p$-emission energy and decaying width to the mass number is demonstrated. Remarkable sensitivity exists due to the size of system, which affects the nuclear part of potentials and energy levels, whereas the Coulomb barrier is common with the same atomic number. The calculated $1p$ energy and decaying lifetime are roughly consistent to the experimental limitation. The present TD-Dirac calculation is expected as applicable widely to proton-rich nuclides in order to improve the REDF by utilizing the $1p$-emission data.