Impact of Nuclear Deformation of Parent and Daughter Nuclei on One Proton Radioactivity Lifetimes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nuclear deformation of parent and daughter nuclei influences proton decay half-lives, proposing a semi-empirical formula that improves prediction accuracy by incorporating shape effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new semi-empirical formula that accounts for nuclear deformation effects on proton decay half-lives, enhancing predictive reliability for proton emitters.

Findings

The formula accurately predicts measured half-lives.

Nuclear deformation significantly impacts decay properties.

Shape coexistence affects decay pathways and probabilities.

Abstract

The influence of nuclear deformation on proton-decay half-lives has been systematically studied in microscopic theoretical frameworks for a wide range of nuclei with Z<82. Correlation between 1p-decay half-lives and the deformed nuclear shapes of both the parent and daughter nuclei has been investigated. Since the deformations of proton emitters and their residual nuclei impact the potential barrier and disintegration energy which are crucial for the accurate determination of half-lives, we incorporate the nuclear deformations of both the emitters and residues in a phenomenological manner and propose a new semi-empirical formula to estimate the 1p-decay half-lives. The robustness of this formula is demonstrated by the accurate predictions of the measured values while making it reliable for forecasting the properties of other potential proton emitters. The phenomenon of shape coexistence as observed in several proton emitters and their respective daughter nuclei, is particularly signicant in this context due to secondary minima in the potential energy surfaces of both the nuclei. Accounting for these factors signicantly affects the estimation of half-lives and branching ratios by introducing additional decay pathways and altering transition probabilities between different nuclear shapes.