Orateur
Description
Nuclear fission remains a major challenge for both experimental and theoretical
studies due to its complexity, involving the collective motion of all nucleons
within a heavy nucleus. In this presentation, a novel experimental approach for
determining a key property of a nucleus, the fission barrier, is discussed.
The heavy radioactive ion beams of interest are provided by the ISOLDE
facility at CERN and impinge on a deuterated plastic target, in inverse kinematics.
Such reactions can result in nuclear fission if the incoming nucleus is
sufficiently fissile and the excitation energy after the reaction is higher than the
fission barrier. Extracting the height of the fission barrier is the key objective
of this project. This is possible by determining the fission probability of a nucleus
as a function of its excitation energy. By measuring such a reaction inside
a solenoidal spectrometer, the excitation energy resolution can be optimized,
limiting key challenges for inverse kinematics reactions, such as kinematic compression
and kinematic shift.
In this approach, protons from (d,p) reactions, fission fragments, and gamma
radiation are detected in coincidence by detectors mounted inside the 2T field
of a former MRI magnet. This project is motivated by the role of nuclear fission
in nucleosynthesis, namely the astrophysical r-process, which is responsible for
the creation of the heaviest elements we find in Nature. To understand this
role, it is necessary to extend fission studies towards neutron-rich nuclei. The
presented approach is a first step in this direction.
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