Microscopic Calculation of Fission Fragment Energies for the 239Pu(nth,f) Reaction

Abstract

We calculate the total kinetic and excitation energies of fragments produced in the thermalinduced fission of 239 Pu. This result is a proof-of-principle demonstration for a microscopic approach to the calculation of fission-fragment observables for applied data needs. In addition, the calculations highlight the application of a fully quantum mechanical description of scission, and the importance of exploring scission configurations as a function of the moments of the fragments, rather than through global constraints on the moments of the fissioning nucleus.

Fragment Yields Calculated in a Time-Dependent Microscopic Theory of Fission

“…We have already alluded to the importance of collective coordinates describing the fragments themselves when extracting their properties, such as their excitation and kinetic energies [18], but to our knowledge this represents the first calculations of fission-fragment distributions in these new coordinates. In addition, we account for the smearing effect of particle number fluctuations on the fragment yields.…”