Updated empirical estimations of α decay half lives for superheavy nuclei

Abstract

A new empirical expression for α decay half lives is proposed by generalizing the Brown formula. The involved parameters are fixed through two fitting schemes performed on the available measured data regarding the α decay Qα values and half lives for 96 superheavy nuclei. The two fitting procedures allow the comparison of the newly proposed formula with the Viola-Seaborg and Royer formulas, which reveals a superior predictive power of the former. Exploiting the similarly excellent agreement with experimental data obtained with all fitting formulas, one generated α decay predictions for 125 unknown superheavy α emitters. The comparison of the data predicted by the different fitting formulas shows a high degree of superposition in a number of 36 nuclei whose average half-live values are considered as highly probable in what concerns experimental realization.