[Submitted on 6 Sept 2024]
Weak decays in superheavy nuclei
Superheavy nuclei represent the heaviest atoms and nuclides known at the limit of mass and charge. The observed superheavy nuclei are all proton-rich; they decay primarily by emitting particles and fission, with a possible small electron capture (EC) branch. Due to the huge atomic numbers and associated relativistic effects, EC-decays of superheavy systems are expected to differ from what is known in lighter nuclei. In this paper, using the quantified relativistic nuclear density functional theory and the quasiparticle random-phase approximation with the interaction optimized to experimental -decay half-lives and Gamow-Teller resonance energies, we study the EC/-decays in nuclei. Both allowed () and first-forbidden ( and ) transitions are considered. We show that the first-forbidden transitions dominate the decay rates in almost all studied nuclei. For proton-rich nuclei, EC dominates over decay. We identify 44 nuclei with EC/ branching ratio larger than 5\%, indicating a possible competition with -decay and spontaneous fission channels.
- Comments:
- 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publication
- Subjects:
- Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
- arXiv:
- 2409.04620 [pdf]