Selection of projectiles for producing trans-uranium nuclei in transfer reactions within an improved dinuclear system model

Abstract: The multinucleon transfer process is one promising approach for producing neutron-rich heavy nuclei. The favorable projectile-target combinations play a key role in experiments. As one important approach to investigate the multinucleon transfer process, one new version of the dinuclear system (DNS) model is developed. The improved version of the DNS model is shown in detail. Based on deformation degree of freedom in the improved DNS model, one way of calculating excitation energies of primary fragments is proposed. And the remarkable improvements for describing experimental data of producing trans-uranium nuclei is noticed. To produce trans-uranium nuclei, the collisions of 48Ca, 136Xe, and 238U projectiles with the 238U target are investigated within the improved DNS model. Based on the potential energy surface, the influence of projectiles on the probabilities of transferring neutrons and protons from the projectiles to the target are studied. One behavior is found that the transfer probabilities strongly depend on the projectiles in the neutron stripping process, while relatively weak projectile dependence is noticed in the proton transferring process. The 136Xe and 238U projectiles show great advantages of cross sections for producing neutron-rich trans-uranium nuclei, although the fission probabilities are large.