Energetics of Nuclear Decays

This section discusses the energetics of a, p, and y decay, demonstrating how the kinetic energies of the products of the decay can be calculated from the masses of the particles involved. In all cases, it will be assumed that the original unstable nucleus is at rest—i.e., it has zero kinetic energy and linear momentum. This assumption is very realistic because the actual kinetic energies of nuclei due to thermal motion are of the order of kT (of the order of eV), where k is the Boltzmann constant and T the temperature (Kelvin), while the energy released in most decays is of the order of MeV. 

In writing the equation representing the decay, the following notation will be used  

Ey = energy of a photon Tj = kinetic energy of a particle type i F, = linear momentum of a particle type i 

---