Lorentz Violation and Alpha-Decay

Abstract

Relating the effective Lorentz violation coefficients for composite particles to the coefficients for their constituent fields is a challenging problem. We calculate the Lorentz violation coefficients relevant to the dynamics of an alpha-particle in terms of proton and neutron coefficients. The alpha-particle coefficients would lead to anisotropies in the alpha-decays of nuclei, and because the decay process involves quantum tunneling, the effects of any Lorentz violations could be exponentially enhanced.