Neutron induced fission of [sup 238]U at incident neutron energies from 1.2 to 5.8 MeV

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The reaction 238U(n,f) has been studied at IRMM at different incident neutron energies ranging from En=1.2 to 5.8 MeV. The existence of vibrational resonances in the region of the threshold of the fission cross-section and the proton pairing effect should induce variations in the fission fragment properties. The fission fragment mass, mean total kinetic energy (TKE¯) and angular distributions have been investigated with a double Frisch-gridded ionization chamber. For each incident neutron energy, more than 105 events have been accumulated. The TKE¯ shows an increasing trend up to En=3.5 MeV with a sudden drop at roughly En=3.8 MeV which might be related to the onset of pair breaking. Above En=3.8 MeV TKE¯ is again continually increasing. The two-dimensional mass-TKE distributions have been compared by means of a fit with theoretical calculations performed recently in the frame of the multi-modal random neck-rupture model. Actually, two solutions are possible with assuming either two or three Gaussians for...