Opportunities for production and property research of neutron-rich nuclei around N=126 at HIAF

The study of nuclide production and its properties in the N=126 neutron-rich region is the frontier and hot topic in nuclear physics and astrophysics research. The upcoming High energy FRagment Separator (HFRS) at the High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), an in-flight separator at relativistic energies, is characterized by high beam intensity, large ion-optical acceptance, high magnetic rigidity, and high momentum resolution power. It provides an opportunity for the study of the production and properties of neutron-rich nuclei around N=126. In this paper, an experimental scheme is proposed to produce the neutron-rich nuclei around N=126 and simultaneously measure their mass and lifetime based on the HFRS separator, and the feasibility of this scheme is evaluated by the simulations. The results show that under the high resolution optical mode many new neutron-rich nuclei approaching the r-process abundance peak around A=195 can be produced for the first time, and many nuclei with unknown mass and lifetime can be produced with high statistics. Using the time-of-flight corrected by the measured dispersive position and the energy loss information, the cocktails produced from the 208Pb fragmentation can be unambiguously identified. Moreover, the masses of some neutron-rich nuclei in the vicinity of N=126 can be measured with high precision using the time-of-flight magnetic rigidity technique. This indicates that the HIAF-HFRS facility has potential for the production and property research of neutron-rich nuclei around N=126, which is of great significance for expanding chart of nuclides, developing nuclear theories, and understanding the origin of heavy elements in the universe.