Abstract
A new phenomenological approach to predicting spontaneous fission half-lives of actinide and superheavy nuclei is presented. A linear relation between the common logarithm of the spontaneous fission half-life \(\log_{10}T_{1/2}^{\text{SF}}\) , and the alpha-particle separation energy \(Q_{\alpha}\) is found for nuclei characterized by a fixed value of the neutron excess \(N-Z\) and by charge-number values in the range of \(90\leqslant Z\leqslant 102\) . A semiempirical formula for calculating the spontaneous fission half-life as a function of \(Q_{\alpha}\) and \(N-Z\) for even–even nuclei is proposed on the basis of this correlation. This formula is successfully extended to nuclei that have an odd mass number \(A\) and odd–odd nuclei, as well as to nuclei for which \(Z\geqslant 103\) . The formula shows good agreement with experimental data, reproducing the half-lives of 111 known nuclei with a mean deviation of about one order of magnitude. The predictions of the new formula are compared with the results based on other empirical formulas and on macroscopic–microscopic and self-consistent microscopic models. The influence of the choice of various mass tables on the accuracy of the predictions is analyzed. The possible fundamental interplay of the spontaneous fission and alpha-decay processes is discussed.
