Microscopic modeling of mass and charge distributions in the spontaneous fission of 240Pu

TL;DR

This paper presents a microscopic approach combining collective action minimization and Langevin dynamics to accurately predict mass and charge distributions in the spontaneous fission of 240Pu, aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology integrating nuclear density functional theory with stochastic dynamics for detailed fission yield predictions.

Findings

Quantitative agreement with experimental fission data.

Charge and mass distributions are sensitive to dissipation and adiabatic effects.

Method effectively captures the influence of nuclear shape and pairing on fission yields.

Abstract

In this letter, we outline a methodology to calculate microscopically mass and charge distributions of spontaneous fission yields. We combine the multi-dimensional minimization of collective action for fission with stochastic Langevin dynamics to track the relevant fission paths from the ground-state configuration up to scission. The nuclear potential energy and collective inertia governing the tunneling motion are obtained with nuclear density functional theory in the collective space of shape deformations and pairing. We obtain a quantitative agreement with experimental data and find that both the charge and mass distributions in the spontaneous fission of 240Pu are sensitive both to the dissipation in collective motion and to adiabatic characteristics.