Search for a long lived component in the reaction U+U near the Coulomb barrier.

We performed an experiment to search for a signature of a long living component in the collision of 238U + 238U between 6.09 and 7.35A MeV. The experiment was performed at GANIL using the spectrometer VAMOS, tuned for observing reactions with kinematics similar to fusion-fission events. Theoretical calculations indicate that if a long living component would exist for this reaction, the most probable fission channel of such a giant system would be via the emission of quasi-lead nuclei. We detected events of such a category in the focal plane of VAMOS. These events present an excitation function growing as a function of the bombarding energy. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]