Basic Nuclear Structure Features of SHN and Perspectives at S$^{3}$

Abstract

After more than half a century of research addressing the synthesis and nuclear structure of superheavy nuclei (SHN), a boost for its progress is expected from the advent of new instrumentation. An order of magnitude in beam intensity increase is envisaged to be provided by new powerful accelerators such as the new DC280 cyclotron at the SHE factory of FLNR/JINR or the superconducting linac at SPIRAL2 of GANIL. In addition, new ion-optical installations like the separator-spectrometer set-up S3 with two complementary detection systems SIRIUS and LEB will provide a substantial sensitivity increase for classically pursued routes like decay spectroscopy after separation (DSAS), and alternative and complementary methods such as high precision mass measurements and laser spectroscopy. Decay spectroscopy has proven in the past to be a powerful tool to study the low-lying nuclear structure of heavy and superheavy nuclei. Single particle levels and other structure features like K isomerism, being important in the fermium–nobelium region as well as for the route towards spherical shell stabilised SHN, have been investigated almost up to the limit posed by the sensitivity of the present-day instrumentation. Precision mass measurements and laser spectroscopy will offer the possibility to study alternative features such as binding energies, charge radii and quadrupole moments. At the magnetic spectrometer VAMOS of GANIL with the recently improved mass resolution and the development of Z identification, deep-inelastic reactions like multi-nucleon transfer can be used to reach more neutron-rich nuclei in the region of light actinides, possibly being extended towards higher Z.