Inference on fission timescale from neutron multiplicity measurement in18O+184W

The pre-scission and post-scission neutron multiplicities are measured for the 18O + 184W reaction in the excitation energy range of 67.23−76.37 MeV. Langevin dynamical calculations are performed to infer the energy dependence of fission decay time in compliance with the measured neutron multiplicities. Different models for nuclear dissipation are employed for this purpose. Fission process is usually expected to be faster at a higher beam energy. However, we found an enhancement in the average fission time as the incident beam energy increases. It happens because a higher excitation energy helps more neutrons to evaporate that eventually stabilizes the system against fission. The competition between fission and neutron evaporation delicately depends on the available excitation energy and it is explained here with the help of the partial fission yields contributed by the different isotopes of the primary compound nucleus.

Energy sharing based on microscopic level densities

The transformation of a moderately excited heavy nucleus into two excited fission fragments is modeled as a strongly damped evolution of the nuclear shape. The resulting Brownian motion in the multi-dimensional deformation space is guided by the shape-dependent level density which has been calculated microscopically for each of nearly ten million shapes (given in the three-quadratic-surfaces parametrization) by using a previously developed combinatorial method that employs the same single-particle levels as those used for the calculation of the pairing and shell contributions to the five-dimensional macroscopic-microscopic potential-energy surface. The stochastic shape evolution is followed until a small critical neck radius is reached, at which point the mass, charge, and shape of the two proto-fragments are extracted. The available excitation energy is divided statistically on the basis of the microscopic level densities associated with the two distorted fragments. Specific fragment structure features may cause the distribution of the energy disvision to deviate significantly from expectations based on a Fermi-gas level density. After their formation at scission, the initially distorted fragments are being accelerated by their mutual Coulomb repulsion as their shapes relax to their equilibrium forms. The associated distortion energy is converted to additional excitation energy in the fully accelerated fragments. These subsequently undergo sequential neutron evaporation which is calculated using again the appropriate microscopic level densities. The resulting dependence of the mean neutron multiplicity on the fragment mass, as well as the dependence of on the initial excitation energy of the fissioning compound nucleus, exhibit features that are similar to the experimentally observed behavior, suggesting that the microscopic energy sharing mechanism plays an important role in low-energy fission.

The Dominance of Proton/Neutron Evaporation Exit-Channel in a Fusion-Evaporation Reaction: The Effect of Target Nuclear Ratio (N/Z)

Cross section of different evaporation residue have been calculated in 112Sn+16O (Neuron/Proton (N/Z) of the 112Sn target is 1.24) and124Sn+16O reaction (N/Z of the 124Sn is 1.48) with beam energy of 80 MeV using statistical model calculation code PACE4. These calculations predicts that the proton emission channels are predicted to be dominant when the N/Z ratio is small (i.e in the first reaction) whereas the neutron emission outgoing channels dominant in the second reaction when N/Z is large. Experimental phenomenon also revealed the fact that in order to populate the proton or neutron reach nucleus we have to choose the target material accordingly.

Neutron anisotropic evaporation and scission emission in fission

Experimental neutron distributions have been investigated in the spontaneous fission of 252Cf at IPHC in Strasbourg. The CORA experiment associating the CODIS twin ionisation chamber and the neutron multi-detector DEMON aimed to solve an long-standing problem in fission: the possible emission of scission neutrons and/or the presence of a dynamical anisotropy in the neutron evaporation by the moving fission fragments. A new method allowing to establish the dynamical anisotropy in an independent way is presented. The results obtained from a comparison with simulations based on GEANT4 are shown.

Study of fission using multi-nucleon transfer reactions

Multi-nucleon transfer channels of the reactions of 18O+232Th, 18O+238U, 18O+248Cm were used to measure fission-fragment mass distribution for various nuclides and their excitation energy dependence. Predominantly asymmetric fission is observed at low excitation energies for all the studied cases, with an increase of the symmetric fission towards high excitation energies. Experimental data are compared with predictions of the fluctuation-dissipation model, where effects of multi-chance fission (neutron evaporation prior to fission) was introduced. It was shown that a reliable understanding of the observed fission fragment mass distributions can be obtained only invoking multi-chance fissions.