Microscopic description of production cross sections including deexcitation effects

Background: At the forefront of the nuclear science, production of new neutron-rich isotopes is continuously pursued at accelerator laboratories all over the world. To explore the currently unknown territories in the nuclear chart far away from the stability, reliable theoretical predictions are inevitable. Purpose: To provide a reliable prediction of production cross sections taking into account secondary deexcitation processes, both particle evaporation and fission, a new method called TDHF+GEMINI is proposed, which combines the microscopic time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) theory with a sophisticated statistical compound-nucleus deexcitation model, GEMINI++. Results: The method is applied to describe cross sections for multinucleon transfer processes in Ca-40 + Sn-124 (E-c.m. similar or equal to 128.54 MeV), Ca-48 + Sn-124 (E-c.m. similar or equal to 125.44 MeV), Ca-40 + Pb-208 (E-c.m. similar or equal to 208.84 MeV), Ni-58 + Pb-208 ( E-c.m. similar or equal to 256.79 MeV), Ni-64 + U-238 (E-c.m. similar or equal to 307.35 MeV), and Xe-136 + Pt-198 (E-c.m. similar or equal to 644.98 MeV) reactions at energies close to the Coulomb barrier. It is shown that the inclusion of secondary deexcitation processes, which are dominated by neutron evaporation in the present systems, substantially improves agreement with the experimental data. The magnitude of the evaporation effects is very similar to the one observed in GRAZING calculations. TDHF+GEMINI provides better description of the absolute value of the cross sections for channels involving transfer of more than one proton, compared to the GRAZING results. However, there remain discrepancies between the measurements and the calculated cross sections, indicating a limit of the theoretical framework that works with a single mean-field potential. Possible causes of the discrepancies are discussed. Conclusions: To perfectly reproduce experimental cross sections for multinucleon transfer processes, one should go beyond the standard self-consistent mean-field description. Nevertheless, the proposed method will provide valuable information to optimize production mechanisms of new neutron-rich nuclei through its microscopic, nonempirical predictions.