Description
Neutron-rich nuclei are essential for understanding the origin of heaviest elements in nature. The rapid neutron capture process proceeds through the still largely unknown region of the nuclear chart. To produce heavy neutron-rich nuclei inaccessible at current radioactive beam facilities, multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions are utilized or pursued at many laboratories around the world. MNT reactions are also a potential pathway to produce heavy and super-heavy nuclei. In Europe, INFN-LNL, GANIL and GSI/FAIR offer unique opportunities to do MNT reaction studies with heavy-ion beams (e.g., $^{238}$U) at and beyond the Coulomb barrier and later with secondary beams, e.g., at the Super-FRS of FAIR. At JYFL, MNT experiments utilizing heavy ion beams are ongoing. The goal of this contribution is to join the various efforts in the European nuclear physics community to ensure an efficient and coherent approach for developing a full-scale MNT-based research program in Europe. We will use complementary approaches (reaction kinematics and mass spectrometry) to understand the underlying processes. The main challenge in making MNT reactions a standard production method for exotic nuclei is the lack of in-depth knowledge of the reaction process, i.e., the cross-sections and kinematics of the generated exotic nuclides. Other challenges are related to the identification (in A and Z), as well as separation, cooling and transport of the ions of interest for precision experiments (e.g., mass spectrometry, decay and laser spectroscopy).