The superheavy elements: Overview

Superheavy Elements (SHE) up to Z = 118 have been produced and studied. The Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) theory provides a reasonably good description of the ground state properties (binding energies, Q-values, deformation, radii, densities etc.) of these elements. Shell closures revealed by the vanishing/minimum pairing energy, are predicted for specific combination of neutron number N and proton number Z, specifically at N = 38, 164, 172, 184 and 198. Some of these have been confirmed experimentally. Future experiments are expected to validate the remaining predictions. Microscopic α-nucleus potential generated in the frame work of double folding model, employing the RMF densities for the daughter nucleus and the experimental densities for the α along with the density dependent M3Y nucleon - nucleon interaction, qualitatively reproduce the experimental half lives for α - decay, calculated in the WKB approximation.