Semi-microscopic theory of two proton emission

Abstract

We propose a semi-microscopic model for the simultaneous emission of two protons. This model has the advantage of avoiding certain technical aspects of a fully microscopic 3-body framework, while also allowing the investigation of the influence of proton pairing on the total lifetime of the decaying nucleus. Thus, we use the standard singlet two-proton wave function on the nuclear surface, provided by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) approach, as a boundary condition for the propagator operator. Our model allows for the estimation of all quantities related to the $2p$ emission process, since it provides the 3-body wave function over most of the domain. We show that reasonable agreement with experimental values can be reached by varying the $pp$ pairing strength outside the nucleus in an interval close to the "bare" singlet value.