Alpha emission and spontaneous fission through quasi-molecular shapes

The potential energy governing α emission has been determined within a liquid drop model including proximity effects between the α particle and the daughter nucleus and adjusted to reproduce the experimental Qα. The α emission half-lives have been deduced from the WKB barrier penetration probability as for a spontaneous asymmetric fission. The RMS deviation between the theoretical and experimental values of log 10[T1/2(s)] is only 0.63 for a recent data set of 373 α emitters and 0.35 for the subset of even-even nuclides. Predictions for the heaviest and superheavy elements are presented as well as simple analytical formulae for log 10[T1/2(s)].