On the pair correlations of nuclear fission neutrons with small relative momenta

Abstract

The theoretical analysis of pair correlations of low-energy neutrons produced in nuclear fission is performed on the basis of the general method of pair correlations of particles at small relative momenta. The analytical approach to the description of the effect of final-state interaction on narrow pair correlations of neutrons is used. It is shown that, at small but nonzero values of relative momenta, the two-neutron correlation function is sensitive to the Fermi statistics and final-state interaction effects only for pairs of scission neutrons, whereas for ordinary fission neutrons (emitted from fission fragments) these correlation effects are absent. Thus, the correlation method makes it possible, in principle, to determine the fraction of pairs of scission neutrons in the total amount of neutron pairs emitted in some fission process.