Synthesis of 292116 in the 248Cm+48Ca Reaction

We report on the observation of the first decay event of the new nuclide (292)116 produced in an experiment devoted to the synthesis of Z = 116 nuclei in the Cm-248 + Ca-48 reaction. The implantation of a heavy recoil in the focal-plane detector was followed in 46.9 ms by an alpha particle with E-alpha = 10.56 MeV The energies and decay tunes of the descendant nuclei are in agreement with those observed in the decay chains of the even-even isotope (288)114, previously produced in the Pu-244 + Ca-48 reaction. Thus, the first a decay should be attributed to the parent nuclide 292116 produced via the evaporation of four neutrons in the complete fusion of Cm-248 and Ca-48. The experiment is in progress at Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions (FLNR, JINR, Dubna). (C) 2001 MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica.