Orateur
Description
The understanding of angular momentum generation in the fission process is important not only for a complete description of nuclear fission but also determines the neutron/gamma competition and total number of gamma rays emitted in fission fragment decay. This knowledge impacts the gamma-heating problem in nuclear energy applications and also for understanding the accessibility of excited states in nuclear structure studies of neutron-rich nuclei. Since the early 1970’s it has been observed from discrete gamma-ray emission that fission fragments possess an average angular momentum of typically 6-7 hbar [1]. In this presentation an overview will be given of the various measurements of spin-sensitive observables (gamma-ray multiplicities, isomeric yield ratios, average spins at yrast, etc.) that have been performed up until the present time. Of particular interest is how these observables vary as a function of the mass, charge and kinetic energy of the resulting fission fragments and the mass, charge, excitation energy and initial angular momentum of the compound nucleus undergoing fission. Suggestions will be given for how future multi-observable experiments might help advance our current understanding of this interesting problem, including exploration of fragment gamma-ray angular distributions and correlations.
[1] J. B. Wilhelmy, E. Cheifetz, R. C. Jared, S. G. Thompson, H. R. Bowman, and J. O. Rasmussen
Phys. Rev. C 5, 2041 (1972)
