10–12 Nov 2025
NISER Bhubaneswar
Asia/Kolkata timezone

Systematic studies to produce heavy above-target nuclides in multinucleon transfer reactions

11 Nov 2025, 16:50
20m
Lecture Hall 2 (LH 2) (NISER)

Lecture Hall 2 (LH 2) (NISER)

Speaker

Dr Devaraja H Malligenahalli (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

Description

Exotic nuclei are typically produced via projectile fragmentation or
projectile fission at relativistic energies, or through complete fusion reactions at
near-Coulomb barrier energies. These production methods, along with the
available beam intensities, define the current boundaries of the chart of nuclides.
However, theoretical predictions suggest that several thousand additional isotopes
may exist on the neutron-rich side, including many along the astrophysical
r-process path. Multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions offer a promising pathway
to access this largely unexplored territory. In our recent studies published in ref [1],
we investigated MNT reactions involving the systems 48Ca+208Pb, 50Ti+208Pb,
and 40Ar+209Bi, focusing on the population of nuclei with proton numbers greater
than that of the target. The target-like reaction products were separated in flight
using the velocity filter SHELS of the Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions
(FLNR), Dubna. Our goal was to examine transfer reactions for producing new
heavy and superheavy nuclei and to assess the applicability of velocity filters for
their investigation. We observed and studied about 40 different nuclides, resulting
from the transfer of up to eight protons from the projectile to the target and moving
in forward direction relative to the beam axis. We present cross-section
systematics for isotopes of elements Z = (83 – 91) measured in our experiment
and compare them with available data from transfer reactions with actinide targets
which lead to isotopes up to Z = 103. Our results will be discussed in the context of
previous measurements, and we will present future prospects for employing MNT
reactions to produce new heavy and superheavy isotopes [1–6]. In addition, the
design of a new kinematic separator, the Separator for Transactinide Research
(STAR), to be developed at FLNR, JINR (Dubna), will be introduced [6–8]. This
project will be carried out alongside the modernization of the U400 cyclotron
(U400R).

References: 1. H.M. Devaraja, A.V. Yeremin, M.L. Chelnokov, V.I.
Chepigin, S. Heinz, et al., Phys. Lett. B 862, (2025) 139353 2. H.M. Devaraja, S.
Heinz, O. Beliuskina, V. Comas, S. Hofmann, et al., Phys. Lett. B 748, (2015)
199–203. 3. H.M. Devaraja, S. Heinz, O. Beliuskina, S. Hofmann, C. Hornung, et
al., Eur. Phys. J. A 55, (2019) 25. 4. H.M. Devaraja, S. Heinz, D. Ackermann, T.
Göbel, F.P. Heßberger, et al., Eur. Phys. J. A 56, (2020) 224. 5. S. Heinz, H.M.
Devaraja, Eur. Phys. J. A 58, (2022) 114. 6. H.M. Devaraja, A.V. Yeremin, S. Heinz
and A.G. Popeko, Phys. Part. Nucl. Lett. 19, (2022) 693- 716 (2022) 7. A. Yeremin,
“Prospects of investigation of multinucleon transfer reactions,” in Proceedings of
the Programme Advisory Committee for Nuclear Physics 51st Meeting, January 30–31, 2020, Dubna, Russia. 8. H.M. Devaraja, A.I. Svirikhin, S. Heinz, A.V. Isaev,
I.N. Izosimov et al., In-flight separation of heavy multinucleon transfer products
using the kinematic separator SHELS, Submitted to Brazilian Journal of Physics on
April 2025

Presentation materials