Te71

Te71, or tellurium-71, is a proton-rich isotope of the element tellurium (atomic number 52) with a mass number of 71. It would contain 52 protons and 19 neutrons, placing it far from the valley of stability on the proton-rich side. If it exists, Te71 is expected to be highly unstable and is not known to have any bound ground state under normal conditions.

The most likely decay scenarios for such a light, proton-rich nuclide are beta-plus decay to a neighboring isotope of antimony (Sb-71) or, depending on the energy balance, direct proton emission to Sb-70. The exact decay channels and half-life, if any, depend on the detailed nuclear mass surface and are not established by observation. In many proton-rich nuclei near the drip line, multiple decay pathways compete, and some isotopes may have extremely short lifetimes.

Production of Te71 would require high-energy nuclear reactions, typically in particle accelerators. Possible routes include projectile fragmentation or fusion-evaporation processes that remove neutrons from heavier tellurium isotopes or add energy to excite the system beyond the proton drip line. To date, there is no widely accepted experimental observation of Te71, and its properties remain theoretical predictions within nuclear models.

Te71 is of interest in nuclear structure and astrophysical modelling as a data point near the proton drip line and in testing the limits of isotopic stability for tellurium. See also lists of tellurium isotopes and discussions of proton-rich nuclei.