Study Shows Abnormal Enhancement of a-Particle Clustering in Uranium Isotopes
Written by AZoMApr 19 2021
In nuclear physics research, the discovery of new isotopes with extreme proton/neutron numbers is always fascinating. The α-decay in the heavy nuclei region is one of the ubiquitous decay modes and has a crucial role in the search for new isotopes.
The illustration of the enhanced α-particle preformation in
214,
216U deduced by the strong proton-neutron interaction. Image Credit: Zhiyuan Zhang.
But even after nearly a century of analyzing α-decay, researchers are still unable to perfectly explain how the α-particle forms at the nucleus surface before it is emitted.