https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201716300015
How elements up to 118 were reached and how to go beyond
1
Institute of Nuclear Chemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55128 Mainz, Germany
2
GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
3
Helmholtz Institute Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany
4
Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
* e-mail: duellmann@uni-mainz.de
Published online: 22 November 2017
The new superheavy elements with Z=113, 115, 117, and 118 were recently accepted into the periodic table and have been named. Elements with Z≥112 are predominantly produced in 48Ca-induced fusion reactions on actinide targets. This pathway is exhausted at Z=118 due to the lack of target materials with sufficiently high proton number to reach elements with Z≥119. Search experiments for yet heavier elements were performed at GSI Darmstadt and FLNR Dubna. The reactions 50Ti + 249Bk, which leads to Z=119, as well as 64Ni + 238U, 58Fe + 244Pu, 54Cr + 248Cm, and 50Ti + 249Cf, leading to Z=120, have been studied. Despite a total duration of these experiments of more than one year, neither succeeded in the identification of a new element. To obtain improved guidance for better-informed search experiments, nuclear reaction studies appear necessary and have recently started. Also technical advances will be an important pillar to this end. At GSI, work towards a new continuous-wave linear accelerator is ongoing and is briefly described.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
