Role of Nuclear Scattering Phase Shifts in the Design and Fabrication of Designer Superheavy Nuclei

https://doi.org/10.65770/BVRM7690

ABSTRACT

Superheavy-element synthesis is controlled by a narrow competition among Coulomb-barrier penetration, capture, quasifission, compound-nucleus formation, and survival against fission. This study develops a phase-shift-guided framework for selecting and evaluating entrance channels for designer superheavy nuclei. The formalism combines a complex Woods–Saxon optical interaction, finite-size Coulomb and spin–orbit terms, partial-wave -matrix analysis, coupled-channel barrier splitting, Hill–Wheeler transmission and evaporation-residue factorization. CERN Open Data from ALICE and ATLAS Pb–Pb collisions are incorporated as an independent high-energy heavy-ion benchmark for data provenance, event-scale comparison and reproducible analysis practice; they are not used as surrogate near-barrier phase-shift measurements. A transparent  numerical case is used to demonstrate how the interaction potential generates partial-wave phase accumulation, how collective couplings redistribute the fusion barrier, and how the transmitted angular-momentum window changes with energy. The calculations show that phase information is most informative when interpreted jointly with absorption, barrier distributions and compound-nucleus survival. The study further identifies the measurements required to convert the framework into a predictive tool for –120 searches: near-barrier elastic or quasi-elastic angular distributions, deformation-constrained coupled-channel fits, and uncertainty propagation into capture and evaporation-residue cross sections. The resulting approach provides a reproducible bridge between scattering observables and reaction design while maintaining a strict separation between ultra-relativistic CERN Pb–Pb data and low-energy superheavy-nucleus formation physics.

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WSN 219 (2026) 123-152

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