Fission in a microscopic framework: from basic science to support for applications

TL;DR

This paper discusses recent advances in microscopic modeling of nuclear fission, particularly using the TDSLDA approach, which enhances understanding of fission dynamics and supports phenomenological models with detailed, real-time insights.

Contribution

It introduces the TDSLDA method for nuclear fission, demonstrating its effectiveness in modeling fission dynamics and providing results consistent with experimental data.

Findings

TDSLDA successfully models fission dynamics with controlled approximations.

Results on excitation energy sharing align with experimental observations.

The approach offers detailed insights into fission processes beyond phenomenological models.

Abstract

Recent developments, both in theoretical modeling and computational power, have allowed us to make progress on a goal not fully achieved yet in nuclear theory: a microscopic theory of nuclear fission. Even if the complete microscopic description remains a computationally demanding task, the information that can be provided by current calculations can be extremely useful to guide and constrain more phenomenological approaches, which are simpler to implement. First, a microscopic model that describes the real-time dynamics of the fissioning system can justify or rule out some of the approximations. Second, the microscopic approach can be used to obtain trends, e.g., with increasing excitation energy of the fissioning system, or even to compute observables that cannot be otherwise calculated in phenomenological approaches or that can be hindered by the limitations of the method. We briefly present in this contribution the time-dependent superfluid local density approximation (TDSLDA) approach to nuclear fission, approach that has become a very successful theoretical model in many areas of many-body research. The TDSLDA incorporates the effects of the continuum, the dynamics of the pairing field, and the numerical solution is implemented with controlled approximations and negligible numerical corrections. The main part of the current contribution will be dedicated to discussing the method, and recent results concerning the fission dynamics. In addition, we present results on the excitation energy sharing between the fragments, which are in agreement with a qualitative conclusions extracted from a limited number of experimental measurements of properties of prompt neutrons.