Dark energy and the Rutherford-Soddy radiative decay law

Abstract

It is shown that a putative evolution of the fundamental couplings of strong and weak interactions via coupling to dark energy through a generalized Bekenstein-type model may, for a linear model of variation, cause deviations on the statistical nuclear decay Rutherford-Soddy law unless bounds are imposed on the parameters of this variation. Existing bounds for the weak interaction exclude any significant deviation. Bounds on the strong interaction are much less stringent.