Overview of research by the fission group in Trombay

Abstract

Nuclear fission studies in Trombay began nearly six decades ago, with the commissioning of the APSARA research reactor. Early experimental work was based on mass, kinetic energy distributions, neutron and X-ray emission in thermal neutron fission of 235U, which were carried out with indigenously developed detectors and electronics instrumentation. With the commissioning of CIRUS reactor and the availability of higher neutron flux, advanced experiments were carried out on ternary fission, pre-scission neutron emission, fragment charge distributions, quarternary fission, etc. In the late eighties, heavy-ion beams from the pelletron-based medium energy heavy-ion accelerator were available, which provided a rich variety of possibilities in nuclear fission studies. Pioneering work on fragment angular distributions, fission time-scales, transfer-induced fission, γ-ray multiplicities and mass–energy correlations were carried out, providing important information on the dynamics of the fission process. More recently, work on fission fragment γ-ray spectroscopy has been initiated, to understand the nuclear structure aspects of the neutron-rich fission fragment nuclei. There have also been parallel efforts to carry out theoretical studies in the areas of shell effects, superheavy nuclei, fusion–fission dynamics, fragment angular distributions, etc. to complement the experimental studies. This paper will provide a glimpse of the work carried out by the fission group at Trombay in the above-mentioned topics.