COLLISIONS OF DEFORMED-NUCLEI - A PATH TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUPERHEAVY ISLAND

A detailed understanding of complete fusion cross sections in heavy-io n collisions requires a consideration of the effects of the deformatio n of the projectile and target. Our aim here is to show that deformati on and orientation of the colliding nuclei have a very significant eff ect on the fusion-barrier height and on the compactness of the touchin g configuration. To facilitate discussions of fusion configurations of deformed nuclei, we develop a classification scheme and introduce a n otation convention for these configurations. We discuss particular def ormations and orientations that lead to compact touching configuration s and to fusion-barrier heights that correspond to fairly low excitati on energies of the compound systems. Such configurations should be the most favorable for producing superheavy elements. We analyze a few pr ojectile-target combinations whose deformations allow favorable entran ce-channel configurations and whose proton and neutron numbers lead to compound systems in a part of the superheavy region where alpha half- lives are calculated to be observable, that is, longer than 1 mu s.