Description of structure and properties of superheavy nuclei

Progress in the theoretical description of superheavy nuclei (SHN) during about the last 25 years is reviewed with the main focus on their structure and properties. This quarter of century is the period when the idea of deformed SHN has appeared and has been developed. The availability of these nuclei to experimental synthesis and studies of them were a decisive factor in a revival of interest in the studies of SHN, which resulted in great progress in this field. Due to this, also the present review gives main attention to deformed SHN. Theoretical studies, which are based on both traditional macroscopic–microscopic, and more recently developed purely microscopic, self-consistent approaches are discussed. Results obtained within these approaches are illustrated. These are the results on shell structure, masses, deformations, αα-decay energies, rotational properties, fission barriers, αα-decay and spontaneous-fission half-lives, and single-particle properties of SHN. The results obtained by different methods are compared with each other and confronted with those obtained in experiment. A chance of existence of exotic configurations, having gross non-uniformities of nucleonic density, expected to occur in nuclei with very large atomic numbers, is addressed.