α-decay half-lives of the observed superheavy nuclei (Z = 108-118)

A systematic and comprehensive study of the decay half-lives of nuclei appearing in the observed α-decay chains of superheavy elements (Z = 108-118) is presented. The calculation proceeds in three steps. First, the relativistic mean-field equations are solved in the axially symmetric deformed oscillator basis to obtain ground-state properties such as binding energies, radii, deformations, and densities. The results are in good agreement with the available experimental systematics, as expected. Next, the calculated densities are used in the double-folding prescription to determine the interaction potentials for the α-daughter systems. Finally, these potentials, along with calculated and experimental Q values, are used in the WKB approximation to estimate the decay half-lives. The calculated half-lives, which sensitively depend on Q values, qualitatively reproduce the experiment.