Systematic Study of Neutron-Rich Rare Isotope Production in Peripheral Heavy-Ion Collisions at Beam Energies 15–25 MeV/nucleon

Abstract

The production cross sections of projectile-like fragments from collisions of 86Kr projectiles with 64,58Ni and 124,112Sn targets at 15 and 25 MeV/nucleon are studied systematically with emphasis on the neutron-rich isotopes. Our recent experimental data are compared with calculations for the above collisions employing a hybrid approach. The dynamical stage of the projectile-target interaction was described with either the phenomenological deep-inelastic transfer (DIT) model or with the the microscopic constrained molecular dynamics model (CoMD). Subsequently, for the de-excitation of the projectile-like fragments, the statistical multifragmentation model (SMM) or the binary-decay code GEMINI were employed. An overall good agreement with the experimental results was obtained. We point out that our current understanding of the reaction mechanism at beam energies below the Fermi energy suggests that such nuclear reactions, involving peripheral nucleon exchange, can be exploited as a novel route to access extremely neutron-rich rare isotopes toward the r-process path and the hard-to-reach neutron drip-line. For this purpose, we believe that the use of re-accelerated neutron-rich radioactive beams may offer unique and exciting opportunities toward unexplored regions of the nuclear landscape.