Screening amendment to the universal decay law for alpha decay

Abstract

By generalizing the electrostatic interaction by means of a screening effect, one proposed a new empirical formula for the $$\alpha $$ decay half lives. In the absence of screening, the formula recovers the universal decay law. The impact of the screening is found to be important only for even Z nuclei and highly sensitive to shell effects, when applied to nuclei with $$Z\ge 84$$ . The proposed empirical formulas are also used for the prediction of the half-lives for even Z superheavy nuclei.