Abstract
Background: The advent of radioactive ion beams has helped considerably to explore exotic decay modes like proton radioactivity in extremely proton-rich nuclei lying on or beyond the proton drip line. Recently, an experimental study was reported on the structural properties of proton-rich nucleus . Interestingly, is the mirror nucleus of the widely studied halo system . In addition, formed in the experiment was identified through its decay by emission. A similar kind of interdependence between neutron halo and its mirror counterpart for emission was reported [Charity, Elson, Komarov, Sobotka, Manfredi, and Shane, J. Phys.: Conf. Series 420, 012073 (2013)].
Purpose: To study and analyze whether the mirror nuclei of known / halo systems are / emitters.
Method: The preference for the mirror nuclei of / halo systems for / emission over the other (/ emission) is studied by -value systematics and potential energy minimization using a cluster-core model. The half-lives of the mirror nuclei of neutron halo systems were determined using a recently proposed empirical formula [Sreeja and Balasubramaniam, Eur. Phys. J. A 54, 106 (2018); Sreeja and Balasubramaniam, Eur. Phys. J. A 55, 33 (2019)].
Results: Among the mirror nuclei of halo systems, (the mirror of ) and (the mirror of ) were found to have a preference for emission over emission by -value systematics. The potential energy surface analysis supported the result where both and were found to be ground-state emitters. The trend got changed with an increase in angular momentum where the minimum in potential shifted from to cluster. Moreover, the half-life calculation matches with the result obtained from -value systematics.
Conclusion: For the halo systems, all the studies made indicate that the respective mirror nuclei have a preference for emission. A similar conclusion cannot be drawn for the mirror nuclei of halo systems except for and , which were found to be ground-state emitters. All the remaining mirror nuclei of halo systems prefers emission as favorable decay mode than the expected emission. The empirical formula can be used as a good tool to evaluate half-life values of proton emitters provided the values are known with desirable accuracy.
- Received 21 June 2019
- Revised 29 August 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.100.054611
©2019 American Physical Society