Abstract
This Letter reports on a systematic study of -decay half-lives of neutron-rich nuclei around doubly magic . The lifetimes of the 126-neutron shell isotone and the neighboring , , are presented together with other 19 half-lives measured during the “stopped beam” campaign of the rare isotope investigations at GSI collaboration. The results constrain the main nuclear theories used in calculations of -process nucleosynthesis. Predictions based on a statistical macroscopic description of the first-forbidden strength reveal significant deviations for most of the nuclei with . In contrast, theories including a fully microscopic treatment of allowed and first-forbidden transitions reproduce more satisfactorily the trend in the measured half-lives for the nuclei in this region, where the r-process pathway passes through during decay back to stability.
- Received 25 February 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.022702
© 2014 American Physical Society