No Arabic abstract
We calculate neutron multiplicities from fission fragments with specified mass numbers for events having a specified total fragment kinetic energy. The shape evolution from the initial compound nucleus to the scission configurations is obtained with the Metropolis walk method on the five-dimensional potential-energy landscape, calculated with the macroscopic-microscopic method for the three-quadratic-surface shape family. Shape-dependent microscopic level densities are used to guide the random walk, to partition the intrinsic excitation energy between the two proto-fragments at scission, and to determine the spectrum of the neutrons evaporated from the fragments. The contributions to the total excitation energy of the resulting fragments from statistical excitation and shape distortion at scission is studied. Good agreement is obtained with available experimental data on neutron multiplicities in correlation with fission fragments from $^{235}$U(n$_{rm th}$,f). At higher neutron energies a superlong fission mode appears which affects the dependence of the observables on the total fragment kinetic energy.
Several sources of angular anisotropy for fission fragments and prompt neutrons have been studied in neutron-induced fission reactions. These include kinematic recoils of the target from the incident neutron beam and the fragments from the emission of the prompt neutrons, preferential directions of the emission of the fission fragments with respect to the beam axis due to the population of particular transition states at the fission barrier, and forward-peaked angular distributions of pre-equilibrium neutrons which are emitted before the formation of a compound nucleus. In addition, there are several potential sources of angular anisotropies that are more difficult to disentangle: the angular distributions of prompt neutrons from fully accelerated fragments or from scission neutrons, and the emission of neutrons from fission fragments that are not fully accelerated. In this work, we study the effects of the first group of anisotropy sources, particularly exploring the correlations between the fission fragment anisotropy and the resulting neutron anisotropy. While kinematic effects were already accounted for in our Hauser-Feshbach Monte Carlo code, $mathtt{CGMF}$, anisotropic angular distributions for the fission fragments and pre-equilibrium neutrons resulting from neutron-induced fission on $^{233,234,235,238}$U, $^{239,241}$Pu, and $^{237}$Np have been introduced for the first time. The effects of these sources of anisotropy are examined over a range of incident neutron energies, from thermal to 20 MeV, and compared to experimental data from the Chi-Nu liquid scintillator array. The anisotropy of the fission fragments is reflected in the anisotropy of the prompt neutrons, especially as the outgoing energy of the prompt neutrons increases, allowing for an extraction of the fission fragment anisotropy to be made from a measurement of the neutrons.
It is shown that the unexpected character of the angular correlation between the angle of the primary fission fragment intrinsic spins, recently evaluated by performing very complex time-dependent density functional simulations, which favors fission fragment intrinsic spins pointing in opposite directions, can be understood using simple general arguments.
A recent analysis of experimental data [J. Wilson $et. al$, Nature $mathbf 590$, 566 (2021)] found that the angular momenta of nuclear fission fragments are uncorrelated. Based on this finding, the authors concluded that the spins are therefore determined only $after$ scission has occurred. We show here that the nucleon-exchange mechanism, as implemented in the well-established event-by-event fission model $mathtt{FREYA}$, while agitating collective rotational modes in which the two spins are highly correlated, nevertheless leads to fragment spins that are largely uncorrelated. This fact invalidates the reasoning of those authors. Furthermore, it was reported [J. Wilson $et. al$, Nature $mathbf 590$, 566 (2021)] that the mass dependence of the average fragment spin has a sawtooth structure. We demonstrate that such a behavior naturally emerges when shell and deformation effects are included in the moments of inertia of the fragments at scission.
In the present paper, we explore the idea of isospin conservation in new situations and contexts based on the directions provided by our earlier works. We present the results of our calculations for the relative yields of neutron-rich fission fragments emitted in fast neutron-induced fission, 238U (n, fission) reaction by using the concept of the conservation of isospin and compare with the experimental data. Our results successfully reproduced the gross features of partition wise fission fragments distribution of 238U (n, fission). This confirms that in all kinds of fission, isospin remains pure in neutron-rich systems even at high excitations. Thus, isospin can be proven as an important quantum number for the prediction of fission fragment distribution.
We propose a novel method to extract the prompt neutron multiplicity distribution, $P( u)$, in fission reactions based on correlations between prompt neutrons, $gamma$ rays, and fragment kinetic energy arising from energy conservation. In this approach, only event-by-event measurements of the total $gamma$-ray energy released as a function of the total kinetic energy (TKE) of the fission fragments are performed, and no neutron detection is required. Using the $texttt{CGMF}$ fission event generator, we illustrate the method and explore the accuracy of extracting the neutron multiplicity distribution when taking into account the energy resolution and calibration of the energy measurements. We find that a TKE resolution of under 2 MeV produces reasonably accurate results, independent of typical $gamma$-ray energy measurement resolution.