Superheavy elements and ultradense matter

Abstract

In order to characterize the mass density of superheavy elements, we solve numerically the relativistic Thomas–Fermi model of an atom. To obtain a range of mass densities for superheavy matter, this model is supplemented with an estimation of the number of electrons shared between individual atoms. Based on our computation, we expect that elements in the island of nuclear stability around Z= 164 will populate a mass density range of 36.0–68.4 g/cm 3 . We then extend our method to the study of macroscopic alpha particle nuclear matter condensate drops.