Super-asymmetric fission of heavy nuclei induced by intermediate energy protons

TL;DR

This study investigates the production of intermediate-mass fragments from proton-induced reactions on uranium and neptunium at 660 MeV, revealing super-asymmetric fission mechanisms through experimental data and simulation comparisons.

Contribution

It provides detailed experimental data on isotope production and compares mass-yield distributions with simulations, highlighting super-asymmetric fission in heavy nuclei.

Findings

93 isotopes identified with high precision

Mass-yield distributions match CRISP simulations

Evidence of super-asymmetric fission mechanisms

Abstract

In this work we present the results for the investigation of intermediate-mass fragment (IMF) production with the proton-induced reaction at 660 MeV on 238U and 237Np target. The data were obtained with the LNR Phasotron U-400M Cyclotron at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia. A total of 93 isotopes, in the mass range of 30 < A < 200, were unambiguously identified with high precision. The fragment production cross sections were obtained by means of the induced-activation method in an off-line analysis. Mass-yield distributions were derived from the data and compared with the results of the simulation code CRISP for multimodal fission. A discussion of the super-asymmetric fragment production mechanism is also given.