Fission decay modes of ²⁵⁴Fm* compound nucleus formed in ¹⁶O+²³⁸U reaction

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Bijenicˇka c. 32, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
² School of Physics and Materials Science, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, 147004 Patiala, Punjab, India

^* Corresponding author: akaur.phy@pmf.hr

Published online: 8 December 2023

Abstract

The quantum mechanical fragmentation theory (QMFT) based dynamical cluster-decay model (DCM) is applied to analyze the probable fission decay modes of ²⁵⁴Fm* compound nucleus produced in ¹⁶O+²³⁸U nuclear reaction at excitation energy EC*_N =45.9 MeV. The fission valley of collective fragmentation potential and the multi-humped peaks of preformation probability P₀ profile are analyzed by considering compact as well as elongated configurations of quadrupole (β₂) deformed fragments. The competitive emergence of different symmetric [symmetric superlong (SL), symmetric supershort (SS)] and asymmetric [standard 1 (S1), standard 2 (S2), standard 3 (S3)] fission modes have been observed for the case of elongated configuration. The division of mass and charge in nuclear fission of ²⁵⁴Fm* depicts the importance of spherical and deformed magic shell closures. The most energetic light (A_L and heavy (A_H) decay fragments of aforementioned fission modes are identified. Moreover, the DCM-calculated fission cross-sections (σ _fission) show reasonable agreement with the experimental measurements [24].