Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Recently, we studied the 208Pb(55Mn,n)262Bh reaction using the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator (BGS) at the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The unexpectedly high cross section observed in this reaction led to the hypothesis that a previous experiment, in which 262Bh was produced in the 209Bi(54Cr,n)262Bh reaction, was performed at a non-optimal beam energy for the 1n product. To test this hypothesis, we have re-measured the excitation function for the 209Bi(54Cr,n)262Bh reaction using the BGS. The results of this experiment will be presented and compared to existing data. In addition, the location and magnitude of the maximum cross section will be compared to predictions using the "Fusion by Diffusion" theory proposed by Swiatecki, Siwek-Wilczynska, and Wilczynski, and implications for other cold fusion reaction pairs will be discussed.