Fission barriers in actinides in covariant density functional theory: The role of triaxiality

Abstract

Relativistic mean-field theory allowing for triaxial deformations is applied for a systematic study of fission barriers in the actinide region. Different pairing schemes are studied in detail and it is shown that covariant density functional theory is able to describe fission barriers on a level of accuracy comparable with nonrelativistic calculations, even with the best phenomenological macroscopic$+$microscopic approaches. Triaxiality in the region of the first saddle plays a crucial role in achieving that.