Experimental developments for the investigation of superheavy elements

Abstract

Production cross sections for isotopes of transactinide elements decrease steeply with increasing atomic numbers and reach values of σ≈1 pb for the heaviest nuclei reported so far, which may be regarded as the present limit of sensitivity. To advance to regions of still lower production rates a significant increase of sensitivity is necessary, which essentially has to be achieved by an increase of the beam currents. This requires highly efficient ion sources, targets that withstand high beam intensities and an improved background reduction to safely identify rare decays. Higher beam intensities will also allow for the production of larger numbers of isotopes of lighter transactinide elements and to study their radioactive decay properties in detail by α–γ- and α-CE – coincidence measurements.