Revisiting the symmetric reactions for synthesis of super heavy nuclei of $Z\geq $120

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates symmetric heavy ion reactions in the rare-earth region for synthesizing super heavy nuclei with Z ≥ 120, aiming to identify reactions with higher stability and lower excitation energy to improve production prospects.

Contribution

It provides a new theoretical analysis of symmetric reactions in the rare-earth region for super heavy nuclei synthesis, an area with limited prior studies.

Findings

Symmetric reactions can produce more stable super heavy nuclei.

Certain projectile-target combinations lead to lower excitation energies.

Potential pathways for experimental synthesis of Z ≥ 120 nuclei are identified.

Abstract

Extensive efforts have been made experimentally to reach nuclei in the super heavy mass region of Z = 110 and above with suitable choices of projectile and target nuclei. The cross sections for production of these nuclei are seen to be in the range of a few picobarn or less, and pose great experimental challenges. Theoretically, there have been extensive calculations for highly asymmetric (hot-fusion) and moderately asymmetric (cold-fusion) collisions and only a few theoretical studies are available for near symmetric collisions to estimate the cross sections for production of super-heavy nuclei. In the present article, we revisit the symmetric heavy ion reactions with suitable combinations of projectile and target nuclei in the rare-earth region, that will lead to compound systems with very low excitation energy and with better neutron-to-proton ratio for higher stability.