Chapter 27: Alpha Decay

As we mentioned in our historical review of the subject of quantum tunneling, in 1908 R. E. Rutherford showed that α particles are indeed the nucleus of He⁴. One of the great successes of quantum mechanics beyond the accurate prediction of the energy levels of hydrogen atom was the explanation of the α decay as a tunneling problem [1],[2]. Since the early days of the discovery of α decay of various radioactive materials, there has been a large body of literature about the theoretical prediction of lifetimes and modes of decay of these nuclei. For more recent theoretical works related to alpha decay see refs. [3]–[6]…