DEFORMATION AND ALPHA-DECAY ANISOTROPIES

In their theory of alpha-gamma angular correlations, Rose and Brink leave the relative sign of different partial waves in alpha-capture undetermined. Some confusion has arisen in the experimental literature where the sign has also been considered as somewhat arbitrary for alpha-decay. We derive an explicit relation between these two processes and show how the above sign may easily be fixed by considering the simpler problem of alpha-decay of a deformed nucleus polarized in a strong magnetic field. We discuss the anisotropy of the angular distribution for this latter problem.