Speeding of α Decay in Strong Laser Fields

• Published in: Open Physics Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 81 - 87
• Main Authors: Mişicu, Ş, Rizea, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter Open 01.01.2016; De Gruyter
• Subjects: 23.60.+e; 25.20.-x; Alpha decay; laser-nucleus interaction
• ISSN: 2391-5471; 2391-5471
• DOI: 10.1515/phys-2016-0001

An extremely high-intensity laser interaction with a nucleus that is undergoing spontaneous -decay is investigated in the framework of the time-dependent one-body Schrödinger equation solved by a Crank-Nicolson scheme associated with transparent boundary conditions. The wave-packet dynamics are determined for various laser intensities and frequencies for continuous waves and for sequences of few-cycle pulses. We show that pulse sequences containing an odd number of half-cycles determine an enhancement of the tunneling probability and therefore a drastic decrease of alpha half-lives compared to the field-free case and the continuous wave case.