SUPER-ASYMMETRIC COLD FISSION AND EXOTIC CLUSTER-DECAY

Abstract

Cold fission of radioactive nuclei is studied in the super-asymmetric mass region of exotic cluster radioactivity, using the quantum-mechanical fragmentation theory (QMFT) based saddle-point fission (SPF) model for calculating the decay half-life times. The calculations show that cold fission also prefers light fragments like 24–26Ne, 28,30Mg, 32,34,36Si, 37P 38S, 46Ar and 48,50Ca, some of which are observed in exotic cluster radioactivity. The predictions of the SPF model calculations are compared with the available exotic cluster-decay experimental data and the calculations based on the preformed-cluster model (PCM). The SPF model calculations show large disagreements with both the PCM and cluster-decay experimental data. For clusters of mass A2<46, the predicted half-lives for the SPF model are much smaller than for the PCM, which apparently means predicting the cold fission as a more probable process than the cluster-decay. The cold fission predicts some new decay modes which are far more probable (smaller log10 T1/2-values) as cold fission fragments than as cluster-decay products. For heavier clusters (A2≥46), the two models (SPF and PCM) make nearly identical predictions, which means predicting an overlap of two processes (cold fission and cluster-decay) for A2>46. Also, cold fission is found to be more probable than hot fission and a new fission mode (known as bimodel fission) is identified in the neighbourhood of the doubly magic [Formula: see text] fragment. Our calculations are made for 234U, 238Pu, 241Am and 252Cf.