Alpha decay and cluster decay of some neutron-rich actinide nuclei

Abstract

Nuclei in the actinide region are good in exhibiting cluster radioactivity. In the present work, the half-lives of α-decay and heavy cluster emission from certain actinide nuclei have been calculated using cubic plus Yukawa plus exponential model (CYEM). Our model has a cubic potential for the overlapping region which is smoothly connected by a Yukawa plus exponential potential for the region after separation. The computed half-lives are compared with those of other theoretical models and are found to be in good agreement with each other. In this work, we have also studied the deformation effects on half-lives of cluster decay. These deformation effects lower the half-life values and it is also found that the neutron-rich parent nuclei slow down the cluster decay process. Geiger–Nuttal plots for various clusters are found to be linear and most of the emitted clusters are α-like nuclei.