Fig. 3. Potential impact of transfer on superheavy element formation.

a The distribution of charge products between the projectile-like and target-like nuclides Z₁Z₂ at the below-barrier energy of E/V_B = 0.91, with corresponding to a separation of $R_{\min }-R_{\mathrm{B}}=1.93$ fm. Shown are the reflected nuclei that maintain similar kinetic energies with respect to the barrier, i.e. ∣ΔE_fi∣ < 5. Other energies are shown in Supplementary Fig. 4. The y-axis shows the absolute probability of the flux being reflected and having charge product Z₁Z₂, P_reflected(Z₁Z₂). Fission-like fragment mass-ratio M_R vs scattering angle θ_cm distributions for (b) ³⁶S+²⁰⁸Pb (E/V_B = 1.067) and (c) ⁴⁰Ca+²⁰⁸Pb (E/V_B = 1.058). The intense vertical bands at the extremes of the M_R distributions arise from (quasi)elastic scattering. The blue dashed lines guide the eye, indicating the degree of mass-angle correlation and thus sticking times.