True ternary fission of superheavy nuclei

Abstract

We found that a true ternary fission with formation of a heavy third fragment (a new type of radioactivity) is quite possible for superheavy nuclei due to the strong shell effects leading to a three-body clusterization with the two doubly magic tin-like cores. The simplest way to discover this phenomenon in the decay of excited superheavy nuclei is a detection of two tin-like clusters with appropriate kinematics in low-energy collisions of medium mass nuclei with actinide targets. The three-body quasi-fission process could be even more pronounced for giant nuclear systems formed in collisions of heavy actinide nuclei. In this case a three-body clusterization might be proved experimentally by detection of two coincident lead-like fragments in low-energy U+U collisions.