Nuclear structure studies of the heaviest actinides and super-heavy elements with the CAGRA array at the JAEA Tandem

Orlandi, R.   ; Makii, Hiroyuki   ; Nishio, Katsuhisa   ; Hirose, Kentaro  ; Asai, Masato  ; Tsukada, Kazuaki  

The search for the "island of stability" (IoS) and the production of super-heavy elements is one of the main goals of nuclear research. Different models disagree on the location and extent of the spherical IoS, and a way to obtain information on the single-particle orbitals near the IoS is to study well-deformed, lighter nuclei around fermium and nobelium, which are poorly known. The deformation causes in fact the spherical single-particle states to split and states originating from high-lying spherical orbitals come close to the Fermi surface in these systems. The exceptional availability of a radioactive Es target at the JAEA Tandem Accelerator in Tokai, Japan, provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the structure of these nuclei. By irradiating Es with heavy-ion beams, via Coulex and multi-nucleon transfer reactions, the -ray spectroscopy of neutron-rich isotopes of einsteinium (Z=99), fermium (Z=100), mendelevium (Z=101) and nobelium (Z=102) will be attempted. The -rays emitted by these isotopes will be detected using a compact array of 8 clover detectors from the CAGRA collaboration.