Alpha decay half-lives of superheavy nuclei 104 ≤ Z ≤ 125

In order to describe scattering, fusion, fission and ground state masses, Krappe and collaborators developed unified nuclear potential, by generalizing liquid drop model. They have incorporated phenomenological parameters accounting for the attractive force between two separated fragments. One of the phenomenological parameters involved in this model is the range of folded Yukawa function, which accounts for surface diffuseness of the potential and short range attractive interaction. The role of range of folding function of Yukawa-plus-exponential potential is analyzed for alpha decay of heavy and superheavy nuclei. Significant effect of this function is noted in preformation probability which improves the accuracy of half-lives of alpha decay. Half-lives for alpha decay are better obtained for two values of the range of folding function 0.54 and 0.8 fm for heavy and superheavy mass regions, respectively. The study confirms the associated shell structure N = 126 in heavy nuclei and N = 152, 162 and 184 in superheavy nuclei. The calculations are extended to predict the half-lives of superheavy nuclei with 118 <= Z <= 125 and 278 <= A <= 320 which are not yet synthesized experimentally.