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Re: Nuclear decay



Concerning Jack U's question:

Where is the "tunneling" in beta-decay?
...
The negative conventional answer is correct assuming that we are really
concerned about nuclear *decay*, which is not a thermally activated
process, and is instead, typically, a quantum tunnelling-like process
whose relevant energy scale is on the order of MeV (1 eV = 11604 K).

Jack, you're a sharpie. I anticipated that someone might complain
(legitimately, in the case of beta decay) if I said that nuclear decay
always was a real quantum tunnelling process. So, instead, I settled
on the weasel-like phrasing "tunnelling-like process" rather than
"tunnelling process" which would *have* been strictly incorrect in
the case of beta decay. Since I did not want my post to go into
detail about the nuances of beta decay, I had hoped that that the
weasel word 'tunnelling-like' would suffice for my purpose--esp.
since alpha decay *can* be defended as a real tunnelling process.
Even though beta decay is not really a tunnelling process it does have
some similarities to such a process, i.e. its strict quantum nature
that does not have any classical analog, its very low probability on the
dynamically relevant time scales, etc. etc.

Do you really want me to defend all the ways that beta decay is like
a tunnelling process? I suspect that you could do a better job of it
than I could anyway.

David Bowman
David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu