Conveners
Fusion and Fission: FF 1
- David Hinde (Australian National University)
Fusion and Fission: FF 2
- Kaitlin Cook (Australian National University)
Quasifission occurs in fully damped heavy-ion collisions following a significant mass transfer between the fragments, without formation of a compound nucleus. It is the primary reaction mechanism hindering the formation of a superheavy compound nucleus after the collision partners have reached contact. As in fission, quasi-fission is expected to be affected by quantum effects leading to...
We present a new revision of nuclear fusion reaction cycles whereby a solid room temperature lithium-6 deuteride ($^6$LiD) is burnt with neutrons beams. New calculations of the time evolution of a network of differential equations for the abundances of various nuclear species are presented. Data on nuclear cross-sections and non-thermal reaction rates are used to forecast the full time...
Heavy-ion fusion reactions are essential to investigate the fundamental problem of quantum tunnelling of many-body systems with intrinsic degrees of freedom. Fusion of light systems is a base for understanding the astrophysical reactions responsible for energy production and elemental synthesis in stellar environments$^1$. Large fusion enhancements are found near the barrier, however, a...
In nuclear matter at low density clusterization of α-particles is favored over nucleonic matter due to the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy. Time-dependent density functional theory calculations reveal that by driving regions of the system to low density during a collision formation of α-particles is enhanced. The dependence of this clusterization on neutron-excess is an open...
The Coupled Channels (CC) model successfully explained the observed structures in the barrier distributions (BD) for many systems. However, there are several mechanisms whose influence on fusion is still not clear, as the role of weak (non-collective excitations) reaction channels. The experimental BD of some systems turned out to be without any structure, in contradiction to theoretical...
The search for new element 119 is currently underway at RIKEN with the $^{248}$Cm($^{51}$V,$xn$)$^{299-x}$119 reaction [1]. The superconducting RIKEN heavy-ion Linear ACcelerator (SRILAC), the $^{248}$Cm target material supplied from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and GAs-filled Recoil Ion Separator III (GARIS-III) are being used. For the effective synthesis of superheavy nuclei, it is...
The discovery in 2010 by Andreyev et al. of mass-asymmetric fission induced by the β-delayed fission of $^{180}$Tl demonstrated for the first time the existence of mass-asymmetric fission outside the actinides. The analysis of this data showed a novel mass-asymmetric fission mode not seen in the actinides, with peaks near Z = 35, 45. Being a single measurement it was not clear with which of...
The generation of the fission fragments spins is one of the least understood mechanism and its theoretical description has been subject to renewed interest following Wilson et al. [1]. We report on a study of the radiative decay of fission fragments populated via neutronless fission of 252Cf(sf). In such rare events the fragments are populated below their neutron separation energy, meaning...
Fission reactions induced by relativistic heavy nuclei have recently allowed the first complete identification of both fission fragments in atomic and mass number [1]. By using different target materials (lead or protons), one could also favour fission reactions at low and high excitation energies. In addition, these kinematic conditions allow the study of a wide variety of unstable fissile...
One of the most well-known challenges facing the field of nuclear physics is the creation of new superheavy elements via heavy ion collisions. As we increase the charge product in the entrance channel of these collisions ($Z_pZ_t$) in the pursuit of new elements, there is a corresponding increase in the suppression of the fused heavy product (evaporation residue). In order to investigate the...
