Thermal effects on the Fission Barrier of neutron-rich nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates how temperature influences the fission barrier height of neutron-rich nuclei in r-process sites, focusing on pairing phase transitions and their impact on fission decay rates.

Contribution

It introduces a finite-temperature Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov approach to analyze temperature effects on fission barriers, including pairing phase transitions.

Findings

Fission barrier height decreases with increasing temperature.

Pairing phase transition significantly affects fission decay rates.

Temperature dependence of fission barriers varies with nuclear properties.

Abstract

We discuss the fission barrier height of neutron-rich nuclei in a r-process site at highly excited state, which is resulted from the beta-decay or the neutron-capture processes. We particularly investigate the sensitivity of the fission barrier height to the temperature, including the effect of pairing phase transition from superfluid to normal fluid phases. To this end, we use the finite-temperature Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov method with a zero-range pairing interaction. We also discuss the temperature dependence of the fission decay rate.