Production of actinides and transactinides in heavy ion reactions

Three different types of reactions are presently used for production of heaviest elements, cold fusion, hot fusion and nucleon transfer reactions. Cold fusion reactions use targets such as Pb or Bi which give access to relatively low excited (∼20 MeV) compound nuclei in the region of neutron-poor isotopes of elements up to Z = 109. Hot fusion uses actinide targets and projectiles such as 16,18O or 20,22Ne. This allows synthesis of more neutron-rich isotopes, however, with typical excitation energies of about 40 MeV. This reaction mechanism was so far successful only for production of elements up to Z = 106. Finally, nucleon transfer reactions, mainly with actinide targets, have recently proven to be very successful for synthesis of relatively low-excited neutron-rich isotopes of heaviest actinide and early transactinide elements. In the talk, a review on the different reaction mechanisms is given together with an outlook on possibilities to synthesize new isotopes of heaviest elements or even to go beyond the presently known heaviest elements with Z = 109