Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission

Qiang, Yu; Pei, Junchen; Godbey, Kyle

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139248

Title: Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission

Journal Article · 14 January 2025 · Physics Letters. B

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139248 · OSTI ID:2522124

Qiang, Yu ^[1];

^[2]; Godbey, Kyle ^[3]

Peking University, Beijing (China)
Peking University, Beijing (China); Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huizhou (China)
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (United States)

Nuclear fission presents a unique example of quantum entanglement in strongly interacting many-body systems. A heavy nucleus can split into hundreds of combinations of two complementary fragments in the fission process. The entanglement of fragment wave functions is persistent even after separation and impacts the partition of particles and energies between fragments. Based on microscopic dynamical calculations of the fission of ²⁴⁰Pu, this work finds that dynamical quantum entanglement is indispensable in the appearance of sawtooth distributions of average excitation energies of fragments and thus neutron multiplicities, but not in average neutron excess of fragments. Both sawtooth slopes from particle-number projections are found to be steep – a feature which can be alleviated by random fluctuations. The persistent entanglement is mainly due to non-adiabatic dynamics since the final splitting is so fast that the non-localization of wave functions is kept during the separation. These findings may impact the understanding of quantum entanglement more broadly in mesoscopic systems

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Research Organization:: Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States); Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Key R&D Program of China; National Natural Science Foundation of China; USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0013365; SC0023175

OSTI ID:: 2522124

Journal Information:: Physics Letters. B, Journal Name: Physics Letters. B Vol. 861; ISSN 0370-2693

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
Nuclear fission
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sawtooth

Title: Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission

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