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Register a new userInfluence of complete energy sorting on the characteristics of the odd-even effect in fission-fragment element distributions
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The characteristics of the odd-even effect in fission-fragment Z distributions are compared to a model based on statistical mechanics. Special care is taken for using a consistent description for the influence of pairing correlations on the nuclear level density. The variation of the odd-even effect with the mass of the fissioning nucleus and with fission asymmetry is explained by the important statistical weight of configurations where the light nascent fission fragment populates the lowest energy state of an even-even nucleus. This implies that entropy drives excitation energy and unpaired nucleons predominantly to the heavy fragment. Therefore, within our model, the odd-even effect appears as an additional signature of the recently discovered energy-sorting process in nuclear fission.
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The even-odd effect in fission is explained by a model based on statistical mechanics. It reveals that the variation of the even-odd effect with the mass of the fissioning nucleus and the increase towards asymmetric splits is due to the important statistical weight of configurations where the light fission fragment populates the ground state of an even-even nucleus. This implies that entropy drives excitation energy and unpaired nucleons predominantly to the heavy fragment. Therefore, the even-odd effect is an additional signature of the recently discovered energy-sorting process in fission.
Potential energy surfaces and fission barriers of superheavy nuclei are analyzed in the macroscopic-microscopic model. The Lublin-Strasbourg Drop (LSD) is used to obtain the macroscopic part of the energy, whereas the shell and pairing energy corrections are evaluated using the Yukawa-folded potential. A standard flooding technique has been used to determine the barrier heights. It was shown the Fourier shape parametrization containing only three deformation parameters reproduces well the nuclear shapes of nuclei on their way to fission. In addition, the non-axial degree of freedom is taken into account to describe better the form of nuclei around the ground state and in the saddles region. Apart from the symmetric fission valley, a new very asymmetric fission mode is predicted in most superheavy nuclei. The fission fragment mass distributions of considered nuclei are obtained by solving the 3D Langevin equations.
Odd-Even Staggering (OES) appears in many areas of nuclear physics, and is generally associated with the pairing term in the nuclear binding energy. To explore this effect, we use the Improved Statistical Multifragmentation Model to populate an ensemble of hot primary fragments, which are then de-excited using the Weisskopf-Ewing statistical emission formalism. The yields are then compared to experimental data. Our results show that, before secondary decay, OES appears only in the yields of even mass fragments and not in the yields of odd mass fragments. De-excitation of the hot fragments must be taken into account to describe the data, suggesting that the OES in fragment yields is a useful criterion for validating or adjusting theoretical de-excitation models.
The fission-fragment mass and total kinetic energy (TKE) distributions are evaluated in a quantum mechanical framework using elongation, mass asymmetry, neck degree of freedom as the relevant collective parameters in the Fourier shape parametrization recently developed by us. The potential energy surfaces (PES) are calculated within the macroscopic-microscopic model based on the Lublin-Strasbourg Drop (LSD), the Yukawa-folded (YF) single-particle potential and a monopole pairing force. The PES are presented and analysed in detail for even-even Plutonium isotopes with $A=236 -246$. They reveal deep asymmetric valleys. The fission-fragment mass and TKE distributions are obtained from the ground state of a collective Hamiltonian computed within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, in the WKB approach by introducing a neck-dependent fission probability. The calculated mass and total kinetic energydistributions are found in good agreement with the data.
Although nuclear fission can be understood qualitatively as an evolution of the nuclear shape, a quantitative description has proven to be very elusive. In particular, until now, there exists no model with demonstrated predictive power for the fission fragment mass yields. Exploiting the expected strongly damped character of nuclear dynamics, we treat the nuclear shape evolution in analogy with Brownian motion and perform random walks on five-dimensional fission potential-energy surfaces which were calculated previously and are the most comprehensive available. Test applications give good reproduction of highly variable experimental mass yields. This novel general approach requires only a single new global parameter, namely the critical neck size at which the mass split is frozen in, and the results are remarkably insensitive to its specific value.
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