https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202022701001
Post-formation in alpha emission from nuclei
1 Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt 64289, Germany
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A & M University-Commerce, Commerce Texas, 75429, USA
3 GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research GmbH, Darmstadt 64291, Germany
* e–mail: jtanaka@ikp.tu-darmstadt.de
** e–mail: carlos.bertulani@tamuc.edu
*** e–mail: s.typel@gsi.de
Published online: 14 January 2020
We propose a novel mechanism to explain nuclear decay by emission of an alpha particle. We show that the famous Geiger-Nuttall law can be explained by post-forming an alpha particle outside the range of the nuclear interaction with the daughter nucleus. This contrasts with the commonly ac- cepted mechanism of first alpha particle pre-formation followed by emission through barrier penetration. We predict that the post-formation mechanism is more likely to occur for a-particles with higher energy.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
