Driving potential and fission-fragment charge distributions

Abstract

We propose an efficient approach to describe the fission-fragment charge yields for actinides based on the driving potential of the fissioning system. Considering the properties of primary fission fragments at their ground states, the driving potential, which represents the potential energies of the system around scission configuration and closely relates to the yields of fragments, can be unambiguously and quickly obtained from the Skyrme energy-density functional together with the Weizsäcker–Skyrme mass model. The fission-fragment charge distributions for thermal-neutron-induced fission and spontaneous fission of a series of actinides, especially the odd–even staggering in the charge distributions, can be well reproduced. Nuclear dynamical deformations and pairing corrections of fragments play an important role in the charge distributions.