Superheavy Nuclei, Heavy-Ion Collisions, and Nuclear Structure
This community investigates the synthesis, decay, and structure of superheavy elements, as well as the behavior of matter under extreme conditions created by relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The work focuses on mapping the limits of the periodic table and characterizing the properties of nuclei far from stability.
The research centers on the production of superheavy nuclei and the measurement of their decay half-lives, alpha decay chains, and spontaneous fission probabilities. A significant portion of the work involves heavy-ion collisions, including relativistic collisions to study quark-gluon plasma and lower-energy collisions to probe nuclear structure. Key methods include cross-section measurements, mass spectrometry, and laser spectroscopy to determine charge radii and nuclear shapes. The community also applies density functional theory and machine learning to model nuclear data and predict properties of exotic isotopes.
The largest share of the community's output is found in beryllium research, accounting for 2.6% of all beryllium research, and 713 papers here. Uranium research also contributes significantly, with 1,008 papers representing 1.7% of uranium research.
The community comprises 33,868 papers, published primarily in Physical Review C, Physical Review, and Nuclear Physics A.
Recent work includes imaging nuclear shapes through anisotropic flow in high-energy collisions, observing deuteron formation from resonance-decay nucleons, and measuring charge radii of exotic tin isotopes near shell closures.