Study of spontaneous fission lifetimes using nuclear density functional theory

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA
² Physics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
³ The Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics - PAN, PL-31-342 Krakow, Poland
⁴ Institute of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, ul. Hoża 69, 00-681 Warsaw, Poland

^a e-mail: jhilam@utk.edu

Published online: 13 December 2013

Abstract

The spontaneous fission lifetimes have been studied microscopically by minimizing the collective action integral in a two-dimensional collective space of quadrupole moments (Q₂₀, Q₂₂) representing elongation and triaxiality. The microscopic collective potential and inertia tensor are obtained by solving the self-consistent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) equations with the Skyrme energy density functional and mixed pairing interaction. The mass tensor is computed within the perturbative Adiabatic Time-Dependent HFB (ATDHFB) approach in the cranking approximation. The dynamic fission trajectories have been obtained by minimizing the collective action using two different numerical techniques. The values of spontaneous fission lifetimes obtained in this way are compared with the static results.