Population of reflection-asymmetric nuclei by multi-nucleon transfer reactions

The heavy-ion collisions of 232Th + 136Xe and 232Th + 56Fe with beam energies 15-20% above the Coulomb barrier have been used to populate nuclei in and around the actinide region of the nuclear chart. The product yield distributions of the binary reaction products stopped in thick targets have been obtained by measuring 7-7 coincidence intensities. A comparison of the distributions for the two reactions shows that the transfer of nucleons is dictated by the mass and charge equilibration processes. This suggests that 136Xe is the better projectile for populating the region of octupole-deformed nuclei which are inaccessible by compound-nucleus reactions.