Exploring the uncertainties in theoretical predictions of nuclear β-decay half-lives * *Partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under (11805004, 11875070), the Key Research Foundation of Education Ministry of Anhui Province (KJ2020A0485), and the Open fund for Discipline Construction, Institute of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University

Abstract

Nuclear -decay half-lives are predicted based on an empirical formula and the mass predictions from various nuclear models. It is found that the empirical formula can reproduce the nuclear -decay half-lives well, especially for short-lived nuclei with s. The theoretical half-life uncertainties from -decay energies and the parameters of the empirical formula are further investigated. It is found that the uncertainties of the half-lives are relatively large for heavy nuclei and nuclei near the neutron-drip line. For nuclei on the r-process path, the uncertainties for those with are about one order of magnitude, which are much larger than the uncertainties for those with and . However, theoretical uncertainties from the parameters of the empirical formula are relatively small for the nuclei on the r-process path, which indicates that the empirical formula is very suitable for predicting the -decay half-lives in r-process simulations.