Theoretical description of superheavy nuclei Original Research Article

The theory of the superheavy elements is reviewed with the main focus on nuclear structure aspects. The structure of the odd-N superheavy elements is investigated using a variety of self-consistent approaches. Microscopic shell corrections, extracted from Skyrme–Hartree–Fock and relativistic mean-field calculations, elucidate the question of the centre-of-shell-stability in the superheavy region. Finally, the existence of exotic configurations, having gross non-uniformities of nucleonic density, expected to occur in nuclei with very large atomic numbers, is addressed.