Spontaneous fission modes and lifetimes of superheavy elements in the nuclear density functional theory

Background: The reactions with the neutron-rich ⁴⁸Ca beam and actinide targets resulted in the detection of new superheavy (SH) nuclides with Z=104-118. The unambiguous identification of the new isotopes, however, still poses a problem because their α-decay chains terminate by spontaneous fission (SF) before reaching the known region of the nuclear chart. The understanding of the competition between α-decay and SF channels in SH nuclei is, therefore, of crucial importance for our ability to map the SH region and to assess its extent.Purpose: We perform self-consistent calculations of the competing decay modes of even-even SH isotopes with 108≤Z≤126 and 148≤N≤188.Methods: We use the state-of-the-art computational framework based on self-consistent symmetry-unrestricted nuclear density functional theory capable of describing the competition between nuclear attraction and electrostatic repulsion. We apply the SkM* Skyrme energy density functional. The collective mass tensor of the fissioning superfluid nucleus is computed by means of the cranking approximation to the adiabatic time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) approach. This paper constitutes a systematic self-consistent study of spontaneous fission in the SH region, carried out at a full HFB level, that simultaneously takes into account both triaxiality and reflection asymmetry.Results: Breaking axial symmetry and parity turns out to be crucial for a realistic estimate of collective action; it results in lowering SF lifetimes by more than 7 orders of magnitude in some cases. We predict two competing SF modes: reflection symmetric modes and reflection asymmetric modes.Conclusions: The shortest-lived SH isotopes decay by SF; they are expected to lie in a narrow corridor formed by ²⁸⁰Hs, ²⁸⁴Fl, and ₁₁₈²⁸⁴Uuo that separates the regions of SH nuclei synthesized in “cold-fusion” and “hot-fusion” reactions. The region of long-lived SH nuclei is expected to be centered on ²⁹⁴Ds with a total half-life of ∼1.5days. Our survey provides a solid benchmark for the future improvements of self-consistent SF calculations in the region of SH nuclei.