Fission Fragment Mass and Total Kinetic Energy Distributions of Spontaneously Fissioning Plutonium Isotopes

TL;DR

This paper models the fission fragment mass and kinetic energy distributions of plutonium isotopes using a quantum mechanical approach with detailed potential energy surface analysis, achieving good agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum mechanical framework with Fourier shape parametrization and detailed PES analysis for modeling plutonium isotope fission distributions.

Findings

Distributions match experimental data well

Deep asymmetric valleys in PES influence fission outcomes

Model applies to isotopes with A=236-246

Abstract

The fission-fragment mass and total kinetic energy (TKE) distributions are evaluated in a quantum mechanical framework using elongation, mass asymmetry, neck degree of freedom as the relevant collective parameters in the Fourier shape parametrization recently developed by us. The potential energy surfaces (PES) are calculated within the macroscopic-microscopic model based on the Lublin-Strasbourg Drop (LSD), the Yukawa-folded (YF) single-particle potential and a monopole pairing force. The PES are presented and analysed in detail for even-even Plutonium isotopes with $A=236 -246$. They reveal deep asymmetric valleys. The fission-fragment mass and TKE distributions are obtained from the ground state of a collective Hamiltonian computed within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, in the WKB approach by introducing a neck-dependent fission probability. The calculated mass and total kinetic energydistributions are found in good agreement with the data.