Speaker
Description
The heaviest elements on the periodic table ($Z = 114-118$) were first produced using beams of $^{48}$Ca in fusion-evaporation reactions with actinide targets. Since no target material with $Z > 98$ is available in sufficient quantities, a beam with higher $Z$ is required for new element discovery campaigns. At the 88-inch cyclotron facility of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory significant upgrades are underway in preparation for a potential element 120 search campaign using the $^{50}$Ti + $^{249}$Cf reaction and the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator (BGS). Over the past year, the ion source team has developed novel induction oven technology that has allowed for the production of $^{50}$Ti beams with on-target intensities in excess of 1.5p$\mu$A. At the BGS focal plane a new detector array for SuperHeavy RECoils (SHREC) has been implemented and commissioned alongside a modern digital data acquisition system. A significant upgrade to the BGS target area is also currently in development to better facilitate future experiments that use actinide targets such as $^{249}$Cf. In this presentation I will give an overview of these recent upgrades as we prepare to search for a new element with SHREC at the BGS and I will highlight the recent successful observation of $^{290}$Lv which was produced using a beam of $^{50}$Ti for the first time.
