Rare cold nuclear processes — A review and some new results

The rare nuclear processes of cluster radioactivity, cold fission and cold fusion, studied on the basis of the quantum mechanical fragmentation theory (QMFT), are reviewed. This theory was advanced as early as in 1974–75 by the author and collaborators, first at Frankfurt and then developed both at Frankfurt and Chandigarh. The QMFT predicted all the three phenomena to occur most probable as cold processes, prior to their experimental observations. The success of experiments with respect to the QMFT and some new results are presented as predictions of this theory for future experiments.