Predicting decay pathways in superheavy nuclei: theoretical insights into $$\alpha$$ and cluster radioactivity

We employ the density-dependent cluster model to calculate α-decay half-lives of recently synthesized superheavy nuclei (SHN) with [Formula: see text]-118. A microscopic α-nucleus potential is derived via the double-folding method using a realistic nucleon-nucleon interaction. Within the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation, supplemented by the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition, we extract both the α-particle assault frequency and barrier-penetration probability for spherical and deformed daughter configurations. Our predictions for five isotopes of the superheavy element [Formula: see text] are benchmarked against several established models, demonstrating excellent agreement. We also explore the competition between α-decay and spontaneous fission, and propose likely decay chains for the as-yet unobserved nuclei [Formula: see text]. Finally, cluster-decay channels of [Formula: see text] are studied using the double-folding potential alongside the Universal curve (UNIV), the Universal Decay Law (UDL), the Unified Decay Formula (UDF), and Horoi's approach. Notably, the UDL framework predicts positive branching ratios [Formula: see text] for heavy-cluster emission (e.g. [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]), indicating that such clusters may rival-or even dominate-α-decay in these SHN.