Possible limits of elements and isotopes

Hawaii DNP 2023

Invited presentation on 11/2023

The borders of the Periodic Table of Elements and of the Chart of Nuclides are not cast in stone. New experimental facilities are being built to create new elements and nuclides at the limit of atomic number, neutron number, and mass. This is driven by the desire of scientists to uncover properties of atoms and their nuclei in a regime of very high numbers of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Since many rare isotopes of interest inhabit the virtually-unexplored regions of the nuclear chart, theoretical predictions amount to extrapolations. To this end, the predictive power of nuclear models in the unknown domain can be improved by using high performance computing and modern techniques and algorithms such as machine learning. This presentation will describe the major challenges in the field of the isotope/element discovery and offer some speculations about the future.

LA-UR-23-33223