Cluster radioactivity in very heavy nuclei: a new perspective

Exotic cluster decay of very heavy nuclei is studied using the microscopic nuclear potentials obtained by folding density dependent M3Y effective interaction with the densities of the cluster and the daughter nuclei. The microscopic nuclear potential, Coulomb interaction and the centrifugal barrier arising out of spin-parity conservation are used to obtain the potential between the cluster and the daughter nuclei. Half life values are calculated in the WKB framework and the preformation factors are extracted. The latter values are seen to have only a very weak dependence on the mass of the emitted cluster.