A new barrier penetration formula and its application to alpha-decay half-lives

Starting from the WKB approximation, a new barrier penetration formula is proposed for potential barriers containing a long-range Coulomb interaction. This formula is especially proper for the barrier penetration with penetration energy much lower than the Coulomb barrier. The penetrabilities calculated from the new formula agree well with the results from the WKB method. As a first attempt, this new formula is used to evaluate alpha decay half-lives of atomic nuclei and a good agreement with the experiment is obtained.