Screened alpha decay in dense astrophysical plasmas and magnetars

Abstract

This paper shows that ultrastrong magnetic fields (such as those of magnetars) and dense astrophysical plasmas can reduce the half life of alpha decaying nuclei by many orders of magnitude. In such environments the conventional Geiger-Nuttall law is modifed so that all half lives are shifted to dramatically lower values. Those effects, which have never been investigated before, may have significant implications on the universal abundances of heavy radioactive elements and the cosmochronological methods that rely on them.