Status and prospects of investigations into the collinear cluster decay of heavy nuclei

Basic experimental results confirming the existence a new cluster-decay type called collinear cluster tripartition (CCT) are presented. Decays of this type manifest themselves, in particular, as a two-dimensional region of a locally enhanced yield of fragments (bump) that corresponds to specific missing-mass values in the mass-mass distribution of fission fragments. One of the decay modes that contribute to the bump can be treated as a cluster-decay type that is new in relation to the well-known heavy-ion or lead radioactivity. The conclusions drawn from an analysis of correlation mass distributions are confirmed by the results obtained from neutron-gated data, measurements of the nuclear charge for CCT events, and the direct detection of new-decay products.