Advances and Challenges in Nuclear Fission and Quasi-Fission for the SuperHeavy Elements

The main goal of the Symposium is to discuss the state of the art of our present knowledge of nuclear processes such as fission and quasifission in the region of the very heavy and superheavy nuclei and to identify possible physics cases to be explored with the two new facilities under development, the Super Heavy Element (SHE) factory in Dubna (Russia) and Selective Production of Exotic Species (SPES) in Legnaro (Italy). These two facilities can play an extremely important and unique role in accessing, with different capabilities, unexplored regions of the nuclear chart, in particular the unknown neutron rich side. This area of research is particularly relevant because is of interest for the nucleosynthesis of the elements heavier that iron (r-process) and for the understanding of the existence and persistence of the shell closures. The latter are the main ingredients for the predicted survival of superheavy elements against fission.

Topics: Fission of very heavy and superheavy elements, Fission modes, fission barriers and half-lives, Fission fragment properties, Fission competition with a-decay, Fusion and quasifission competition, Production of superheavy elements, Fission Studies with Radioactive Ion Beams