Microscopic Calculation of Fission Product Yields for Odd-Mass Nuclei

• Main Authors: Schunck, N, Verriere, M, Aguilar, G. Potel, Malone, R. C, Silano, J. A, Ramirez, A. P. D, Tonchev, A. P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 21-12-2022
• Subjects: Physics - Nuclear Theory
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2212.11416

Fission data are essential inputs to reaction networks involved in
nucleosynthesis simulations and nuclear forensics. In such applications as well
as in the description of multi-chance fission, the characteristics of fission
for odd-mass nuclei are just as important as those for even-even nuclei. The
fission theories that aim at explicitly describing fission dynamics are
typically based on some variant of the nuclear mean-field theory. In such
cases, the treatment of systems with an odd number of particles is markedly
more involved, both formally and computationally. In this article, we use the
blocking prescription of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory with Skyrme energy
functionals to compute the deformation properties of odd-mass uranium isotopes.
We show that the resulting fission fragment distributions depend quite
significantly on the spin of the odd neutron. By direct calculation of the spin
distribution of the fissioning nucleus, we propose a methodology to rigorously
predict the charge and mass distributions in odd-mass nuclei.