Quantum Mechanics and Radioactive Disintegration

Abstract

Application of quantum mechanics to a simple model of the nucleus gives the phenomenon of radioactive disintegration. The statistical nature of the quantum mechanics gives directly disintegration as a chance phenomenon without any special hypothesis. §1 contains a presentation of those features of quantum mechanics which are here used and gives a simple calculation of the disintegration constant. §2 discusses the qualitative application of the model to the nucleus. §3 presents quantitative calculations amounting to a theoretical interpretation of the Geiger-Nuttall relation between the rate of disintegration and the energy of the emitted α-particle. In getting this relation one arrives at the rather remarkable conclusion that the law of force between emitted a-particle and the rest of the nucleus is substantially the same in all the atoms even where the decay rates stand in the ratio 10²². §4 calls attention to the natural way in which the paradoxical results of Rutherford and Chadwick on the scattering of fast a-particles by uranium receive explanation with the model here used. §5 discusses certain limitations inherent in the methods employed.

An account of this work was first published in Nature for September 22, 1928. In a number of the Zeitschrift für Physik (51, 204, 1928) received here two weeks ago there appears a paper by Gamow who has arrived quite independently at the same basic idea as was presented in our letter and which is here treated in detail. Reports of this paper were also given at the Schenectady meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on November 20, 1928 and at the Minneapolis meeting of the American Physical Society on December 1, 1928.