Study of multi-nucleon transfer reactions in 58, 64Ni + 207Pb collisions at the velocity filter SHIP

We investigated multi-nucleon transfer reactions in collisions of ⁵⁸Ni + ²⁰⁷Pb and ⁶⁴Ni + ²⁰⁷Pb at Coulomb barrier energies. The new aspect is that we used a velocity filter (SHIP at GSI) for the separation of the heavy target-like transfer products from background events. The isotopic identification was performed via the $ \alpha$ decay properties of the reaction products. The goal of the experiment was to study the characteristics of multi-nucleon transfer reactions in the region of heavy nuclei and the applicability of existing separation and detection techniques, which are usually used for identification of heavy fusion-evaporation residues, to heavy transfer products. This was motivated by recent theoretical results from macroscopic-microscopic models which suggest deep inelastic transfer reactions in heavy systems as a means to produce new neutron-rich isotopes in the region of N = 126 and in the region of superheavy nuclei. In this paper we present the isotopic yields, the excitation functions and the excitation energies of the heavy transfer products with Z > 82 as well as the influence of shell effects on the reaction products. The influence of the different neutron numbers of the projectiles is also discussed.