Alpha Decay,Shell Structure,and New Elements

We systematically analyze the experimental data of alpha decay ineven-even heavy nuclei far from stability and find that theGeiger-Nuttall law breaks for an isotopic chain when its neutronnumber is across a magic number or there is a deformed subshell.This break can be used to identify new magic numbers of superheavy nuclei. It is also discovered that there is a newlinear relation between the logarithm of half-life and the reciprocal of the square root of decay energy for N=126 and N=152 isotones. It could be a new law of alpha decay for nuclei withmagic neutron numbers but the physics behind it is to be explored. The significance of these researches for the search of newelements is discussed.