What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to refine a semi-empirical law for predicting nuclear half-lives, particularly for heavy nuclides.

April 1, 2026Open Access

Benchmarking a Semi-Empirical Coulomb–Shell Law for Nuclear Half-Life Prediction

Key Points

The aim is to refine a semi-empirical law for predicting nuclear half-lives, particularly for heavy nuclides.
Developed a benchmark package for the semi-empirical half-life law.
Maintained the original structure with a normalized Coulomb-stress term and a Gaussian for 208Pb.
Evaluated against deterministic datasets derived from actual nuclides.
Applied least-squares recalibration to improve the model's accuracy.
The least-squares recalibration significantly reduces prediction errors in heavy nuclides.
Original coefficients showed poor extrapolation capabilities across nuclide datasets.

Abstract

We expand the previously proposed Rempel semi-empirical half-life law into a reproducible journal-style benchmark package. The study keeps the original functional structure—a normalized Coulomb-stress term plus a daughter-shell Gaussian centered near doubly magic 208Pb—and evaluates it on two deterministic datasets built from real nuclides. The original anchor-calibrated coefficients do not extrapolate globally, but a least-squares recalibration reduces the error significantly in the heavy-nuclide sector. (p. 1)

Benchmarking a Semi-Empirical Coulomb–Shell Law for Nuclear Half-Life Prediction

Key Points

Abstract

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