The radius of a nucleus is one of the important quantities in nuclear physics. Although there are many researches on ground-state properties of superheavy nuclei, researches on charge radii of superheavy nuclei are rare. In this article, nuclear root-mean-square (rms) charge radii of heavy and superheavy nuclei are extracted from the experimental $\alpha$-decay data. $\alpha$-decay calculations are performed within the generalized density-dependent cluster model, where $\alpha$-decay half-lives are evaluated using quasibound state wave functions. The charge distribution of daughter nuclei is determined in the double-folding model to reproduce the experimental $\alpha$-decay half-lives. The rms charge radius is then calculated using the resulting charge distribution. In addition, a simple formula is also proposed to calculate nuclear charge radii with the experimental $\alpha$-decay energies and half-lives. The formula is directly derived from the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin barrier penetration probability with some approximations. The two different methods show good agreement with the experimental data for even-even nuclei, and the deduced results are consistent with other theoretical models. Moreover, nuclear radii of heavy and superheavy nuclei with $Z=98$–116 are extracted from the $\alpha$-decay data, for which $\alpha$ decay is a unique tool to probe nuclear sizes at present. This is the first result on nuclear charge radii of superheavy nuclei based on the experimental $\alpha$-decay data.

• Received 10 December 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.87.024310