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

Abstract

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.