Collisions of deformed nuclei: A path to the far side of the superheavy island

• Published in: Nuclear physics. A Vol. 596; no. 2; pp. 329 - 354
• Main Authors: Iwamoto, Akira, Möller, Peter, Rayford^Nix, J., Sagawa, Hiroyuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.01.1996
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/0375-9474(95)00394-0

A detailed understanding of complete fusion cross sections in heavy-ion collisions requires a consideration of the effects of the deformation of the projectile and target. Our aim here is to show that deformation and orientation of the colliding nuclei have a very significant effect on the fusion-barrier height and on the compactness of the touching configuration. To facilitate discussions of fusion configurations of deformed nuclei, we develop a classification scheme and introduce a notation convention for these configurations. We discuss particular deformations and orientations that lead to compact touching configurations and to fusion-barrier heights that correspond to fairly low excitation energies of the compound systems. Such configurations should be the most favorable for producing superheavy elements. We analyze a few projectile-target combinations whose deformations allow favorable entrance-channel configurations and whose proton and neutron numbers lead to compound systems in a part of the superheavy region where α half-lives are calculated to be observable, that is, longer than 1 μs.