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Register a new userA Nonequilibrium Information Entropy Approach to Ternary Fission of Actinides
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Ternary fission of actinides probes the state of the nucleus at scission. Light clusters are produced in space and time very close to the scission point. Within the nonequilibrium statistical operator method, a generalized Gibbs distribution is constructed from the information given by the observed yields of isotopes. Using this relevant statistical operator, yields are calculated taking excited states and continuum correlations into account, in accordance with the virial expansion of the equation of state. Clusters with mass number $A le 10$ are well described using the nonequilibrium generalizations of temperature and chemical potentials. Improving the virial expansion, in-medium effects may become of importance in determining the contribution of weakly bound states and continuum correlations to the intrinsic partition function. Yields of larger clusters, which fail to reach this quasi-equilibrium form of the relevant distribution, are described by nucleation kinetics, and a saddle-to-scission relaxation time of about 7000 fm/c is inferred. Light charged particle emission, described by reaction kinetics and virial expansions, may therefore be regarded as a very important tool to probe the nonequilibrium time evolution of actinide nuclei during fission.
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Nuclear fission of heavy (actinide) nuclei results predominantly in asymmetric mass-splits. Without quantum shells, which can give extra binding energy to these mass-asymmetric shapes, the nuclei would fission symmetrically. The strongest shell effects are in spherical nuclei, so naturally the spherical doubly-magic ${^{132}}$Sn nucleus (${Z=50}$ protons), was expected to play a major role. However, a systematic study of fission has shown that the heavy fragments are distributed around ${Z=52}$ to 56, indicating that ${^{132}}$Sn is not the only driver. Reconciling the strong spherical shell effects at ${Z=50}$ with the different ${Z}$ values of fission fragments observed in nature has been a longstanding puzzle. Here, we show that the final mass asymmetry of the fragments is also determined by the extra stability of octupole (pear-shaped) deformations which have been recently confirmed experimentally around $^{144}$Ba (${Z=56}$), one of very few nuclei with shell-stabilized octupole deformation. Using a modern quantum many-body model of superfluid fission dynamics, we found that heavy fission fragments are produced predominantly with ${52-56}$ protons, associated with significant octupole deformation acquired on the way to fission. These octupole shapes favouring asymmetric fission are induced by deformed shells at ${Z=52}$ and 56. In contrast, spherical magic nuclei are very resistant to octupole deformation, which hinders their production as fission fragments. These findings may explain surprising observations of asymmetric fission of lighter than lead nuclei.
For the first time, we apply the temperature dependent relativistic mean field (TRMF) model to study the ternary fission of heavy nucleus using level density approach. The probability of yields of a particular fragment is obtained by evaluating the convolution integrals which employ the excitation energy and the level density parameter for a given temperature calculated within the TRMF formalism. To illustrate, we have considered the ternary fissions in 252Cf, 242Pu and 236U with fixed third fragment A3 = 48Ca, 20O and 16O respectively. The relative yields are studied for the temperatures T = 1, 2 and 3 MeV. For the comparison, the relative yields are also calculated from the single particle energies of the finite range droplet model (FRDM). In general, the larger phase space for the ternary fragmentation is observed indicating that such fragmentations are most probable ones. For T = 2 and 3 MeV, the Sn + Ni + Ca is the most probable combination for the nucleus 252Cf. However, for the nuclei 242Pu and 236U, the maximum fragmentation yields at T = 2 MeV differ from those at T = 3 MeV. For T = 3 MeV, the closed shell (Z = 8) light mass fragments with its corresponding partners has larger yield values. But, at T = 2 MeV Si/P/S are favorable fragments with the corresponding partners. It is noticed that the symmetric binary fragmentation along with the fixed third fragment for 242Pu and 236U are also favored at T = 1 MeV. The temperature dependence of the nuclear shape and the single particle energies are also discussed.
We developed a three-center phenomenological model,able to explain qualitatively the recently obtained experimental results concerning the quasimolecular stage of a light-particle accompanied fission process. It was derived from the liquid drop model under the assumption that the aligned configuration, with the emitted particle between the light and heavy fragment, is reached by increasing continuously the separation distance, while the radii of the heavy fragment and of the light particle are kept constant. In such a way,a new minimum of a short-lived molecular state appears in the deformation energy at a separation distance very close to the touching point. This minimum allows the existence of a short-lived quasi-molecular state, decaying into the three final fragments.The influence of the shell effects is discussed. The half-lives of some quasimolecular states which could be formed in the $^{10}$Be and $^{12}$C accompanied fission of $^{252}$Cf are roughly estimated to be the order of 1 ns, and 1 ms, respectively.
Fission-fragment mass distributions are asymmetric in fission of typical actinide nuclei for nucleon number $A$ in the range $228 lnsim A lnsim 258$ and proton number $Z$ in the range $90lnsim Z lnsim 100$. For somewhat lighter systems it has been observed that fission mass distributions are usually symmetric. However, a recent experiment showed that fission of $^{180}$Hg following electron capture on $^{180}$Tl is asymmetric. We calculate potential-energy surfaces for a typical actinide nucleus and for 12 even isotopes in the range $^{178}$Hg--$^{200}$Hg, to investigate the similarities and differences of actinide compared to mercury potential surfaces and to what extent fission-fragment properties, in particular shell structure, relate to the structure of the static potential-energy surfaces. Potential-energy surfaces are calculated in the macroscopic-microscopic approach as functions of fiveshape coordinates for more than five million shapes. The structure of the surfaces are investigated by use of an immersion technique. We determine properties of minima, saddle points, valleys, and ridges between valleys in the 5D shape-coordinate space. Along the mercury isotope chain the barrier heights and the ridge heights and persistence with elongation vary significantly and show no obvious connection to possible fragment shell structure, in contrast to the actinide region, where there is a deep asymmetric valley extending from the saddle point to scission. The mechanism of asymmetric fission must be very different in the lighter proton-rich mercury isotopes compared to the actinide region and is apparently unrelated to fragment shell structure. Isotopes lighter than $^{192}$Hg have the saddle point blocked from a deep symmetric valley by a significant ridge. The ridge vanishes for the heavier Hg isotopes, for which we would expect a qualitatively different asymmetry of the fragments.
We consider the collinear ternary fission which is a sequential ternary decay with a very short time between the ruptures of two necks connecting the middle cluster of the ternary nuclear system and outer fragments. In particular, we consider the case where the Coulomb field of the first massive fragment separated during the first step of the fission produces a lower pre-scission barrier in the second step of the residual part of the ternary system. In this case, we obtain a probability of about $10^{-3}$ for the yield of massive clusters such as uclide[70]{Ni}, uclide[80-82]{Ge}, uclide[86]{Se}, and uclide[94]{Kr} in the ternary fission of uclide[252]{Cf}. These products appear together with the clusters having mass numbers of $A = 132$--$140$. The results show that the yield of a heavy cluster such as uclide[68-70]{Ni} would be followed by a product of $A = 138$--$148$ with a large probability as observed in the experimental data obtained with the FOBOS spectrometer at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The third product is not observed. The landscape of the potential energy surface shows that the configuration of the Ni + Ca + Sn decay channel is lower about 12 MeV than that of the Ca + Ni + Sn channel. This leads to the fact, that the yield of Ni and Sn is large. The analysis on the dependence of the velocity of the middle fragment on mass numbers of the outer products leads to the conclusion that, in the collinear tripartition channel of uclide[252]{Cf}, the middle cluster has a very small velocity, which does not allow it to be found in experiments.
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