Decay modes in spontaneous fission

✍ Scribed by F. Gönnenwein

• Book ID: 104334114
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 501 KB
• Volume: 654
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/s0375-9474(00)88561-9

✦ Synopsis

Spontaneous fission (SF) is considered to be the choice reaction for studying the influence of shell and pairing effects in fission in general, and in particular their impact on the mass and energy distributions of fission fragments. For the time being some 35 SF reactions have been analysed in detail for elements ranging from Pu up to Rf. Going from the lighter to the heavier actinides both, the distributions of fragment mass (or charge) and of total kinetic energy undergo dramatic changes. It is observed in experiment, however, that these distributions may be well described as a superposition of a few fission modes, each with its own characteristic mass an energy pattern. The experimental modes are traced in theory to fine structures in the potential energy surface of a fissioning nucleus, provided shell and pairing corrections to the basic liquid drop model are accounted for.