Proton emission – new results and future prospects

Proton emission is the radioactive decay mode that is expected to determine the limit of observable proton-rich nuclei for most elements. Considerable progress has been made in the study of proton-emitting nuclei since the first observation of direct proton emission nearly 50 years ago. This has led to improvements in our understanding of this decay process and provided invaluable nuclear structure data far from the valley of beta stability. The rapid fall in half-lives with increasing neutron deficiency when proton emission dominates makes it likely that for some elements, the lightest isotopes whose ground states can be observed in conventional experiments have already been reached. The enhanced stability against proton emission of the recently discovered high-lying isomer in Ta raises the possibility that proton emission from multiparticle isomers could be observed in nuclei beyond the expected boundaries of the nuclear landscape.