Comprehensive decay law for emission of charged particles and exotic cluster radioactivity.

A general decay formula for the emission of charged particles from metastable nuclei is developed based on the basic phenomenon of resonances occurring in quantum scattering process under Coulomb-nuclear potential. It relates the half-lives of radioactive decays with the Q values of the outgoing elements with masses and charges of the nuclei involved in the decay. The relation is found to be a generalization of the Geiger-Nuttall law in α radioactivity and explains well all the known emissions of charged particles including clusters, alpha and proton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]