This work presents a new phenomenological approach for predicting the spontaneous fission half-lives of actinides and superheavy nuclei. A linear dependence between the decimal logarithm of the spontaneous fission half-life log T and the energy release Q of alpha decay is found for nuclei with fixed neutron excess N – Z and atomic numbers in the range 90 ≤ Z ≤ 102. Based on this correlation, a semi-empirical formula is proposed for the spontaneous fission half-life of even–even nuclei as a function of Q and N – Z. The proposed formula is further extended to predict half-lives for odd–A, odd–odd nuclei, and nuclei with Z ≥ 103. The formula demonstrates good agreement with experimental data, reproducing the half-lives of 111 known nuclei with a mean deviation of 1.00 order of magnitude. Predictions of the new formula are compared with results obtained using other empirical formulas and microscopic–macroscopic and self-consistent microscopic models. An analysis of the influence of different mass tables on the accuracy of the predictions is performed. The possible fundamental relationship between spontaneous fission and alpha-decay processes is discussed.
N. S. Moiseev (Wed,) studied this question.