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Title: Nuclear Fission Dynamics: Past, Present, Needs, and Future

Abstract

Significant progress in the understanding of the fission process within a microscopic framework has been recently reported. Even though the complete description of this important nuclear reaction remains a computationally demanding task, recent developments in theoretical modeling and computational power have brought current microscopic simulations to the point where they can provide guidance and constraints to phenomenological models, without making recourse to parameters. An accurate treatment compatible with our understanding of the inter-nucleon interactions should be able to describe the real-time dynamics of the fissioning system and could justify or rule out assumptions and approximations incompatible with the underlying universally accepted quantum-mechanical framework. Of particular importance are applications to observables that cannot be directly measured in experimental setups (such as the angular momentum distribution of the fission fragments, or the excitation energy sharing between the fission fragments, or fission of nuclei formed during the r-process), and their dependence of the excitation energy in the fissioning system. Even if accurate predictions are not within reach, being able to extract the trends with increasing excitation energy is important in various applications. The most advanced microscopic simulations of the fission process do not support the widely used assumption of adiabaticity of the largemore » amplitude collective motion in fission, in particular for trajectories from the outer saddle toward the scission configuration. Hence, the collective potential energy surface and inertia tensor, which are the essential elements of many simplified microscopic theoretical approaches, become irrelevant. In reality, the dynamics of the fissioning system is slower than in the case of pure adiabatic motion by a factor of three to four times and is strongly overdamped. The fission fragment properties are defined only after the full separation, while in most of the current approaches no full separation can be achieved, which increases the uncertainties in describing fission-related observables in such methods.« less

Authors:
; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
OSTI Identifier:
1605294
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1608957; OSTI ID: 1630874; OSTI ID: 1839623
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-19-32211
Journal ID: ISSN 2296-424X; 63
Grant/Contract Number:  
NA0003841; AC05-00OR22725; AC02-05CH11231; 89233218CNA000001
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Frontiers in Physics
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Frontiers in Physics Journal Volume: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 2296-424X
Publisher:
Frontiers Research Foundation
Country of Publication:
Switzerland
Language:
English
Subject:
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS; nuclear fission; total kinetic energy; total excitation energy; overdamped collective motion; adiabatic collective motion; average neutron multiplicity; Fission dynamics

Citation Formats

Bulgac, Aurel, Jin, Shi, and Stetcu, Ionel. Nuclear Fission Dynamics: Past, Present, Needs, and Future. Switzerland: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.3389/fphy.2020.00063.
Bulgac, Aurel, Jin, Shi, & Stetcu, Ionel. Nuclear Fission Dynamics: Past, Present, Needs, and Future. Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.00063
Bulgac, Aurel, Jin, Shi, and Stetcu, Ionel. Wed . "Nuclear Fission Dynamics: Past, Present, Needs, and Future". Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.00063.
@article{osti_1605294,
title = {Nuclear Fission Dynamics: Past, Present, Needs, and Future},
author = {Bulgac, Aurel and Jin, Shi and Stetcu, Ionel},
abstractNote = {Significant progress in the understanding of the fission process within a microscopic framework has been recently reported. Even though the complete description of this important nuclear reaction remains a computationally demanding task, recent developments in theoretical modeling and computational power have brought current microscopic simulations to the point where they can provide guidance and constraints to phenomenological models, without making recourse to parameters. An accurate treatment compatible with our understanding of the inter-nucleon interactions should be able to describe the real-time dynamics of the fissioning system and could justify or rule out assumptions and approximations incompatible with the underlying universally accepted quantum-mechanical framework. Of particular importance are applications to observables that cannot be directly measured in experimental setups (such as the angular momentum distribution of the fission fragments, or the excitation energy sharing between the fission fragments, or fission of nuclei formed during the r-process), and their dependence of the excitation energy in the fissioning system. Even if accurate predictions are not within reach, being able to extract the trends with increasing excitation energy is important in various applications. The most advanced microscopic simulations of the fission process do not support the widely used assumption of adiabaticity of the large amplitude collective motion in fission, in particular for trajectories from the outer saddle toward the scission configuration. Hence, the collective potential energy surface and inertia tensor, which are the essential elements of many simplified microscopic theoretical approaches, become irrelevant. In reality, the dynamics of the fissioning system is slower than in the case of pure adiabatic motion by a factor of three to four times and is strongly overdamped. The fission fragment properties are defined only after the full separation, while in most of the current approaches no full separation can be achieved, which increases the uncertainties in describing fission-related observables in such methods.},
doi = {10.3389/fphy.2020.00063},
journal = {Frontiers in Physics},
number = ,
volume = 8,
place = {Switzerland},
year = {Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 EDT 2020},
month = {Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 EDT 2020}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.00063

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 35 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

FIGURE 1 FIGURE 1: The schematic evolution of the single-particle nucleons levels (Upper panel) and of the total nuclear energy (Lower panel) as a function of deformation parameter q. The thick line represents the Fermi level and the up/down arrows depict the Cooper pairs of nucleons on the Fermi level only, inmore » time-reversed orbits (m,−m). This figure is reproduced from Bulgac et al. under the terms of the American Physical Society copyright agreement.« less

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