Challenging nuclear structure of the heaviest – opportunities at S³

Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds – GANIL CEA/DRF-CNRS/IN2P3, Bd. Becquerel, BP 55027, F-14076 Caen, France

^* e-mail: Dieter.Ackermann@ganil.fr

Published online: 4 December 2019

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 like 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 like 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 likeK isomerism, being important in the fermium-nobelium region as well as for tracing deformation towards spherical shell stabilised SHN, have been investigated almost up to the limit posed by the sensitivity of present-day instrumentation. Precision mass measurements and laser spectroscopy will offer the possibility to study alternative features like atomic and nuclear binding energies, nuclear charge radii and quadrupolemoments.