title: Brownian shape motion on five-dimensional potential-energy surfaces:nuclear fission-fragment mass distributions.
abstract: Although nuclear fission can be understood qualitatively as an evolution of the nuclear shape, a quantitative description has proven to be very elusive. In particular, until now, there existed no model with demonstrated predictive power for the fission-fragment mass yields. Exploiting the expected strongly damped character of nuclear dynamics, we treat the nuclear shape evolution in analogy with Brownian motion and perform random walks on five-dimensional fission potential-energy surfaces which were calculated previously and are the most comprehensive available. Test applications give good reproduction of highly variable experimental mass yields. This novel general approach requires only a single new global parameter, namely, the critical neck size at which the mass split is frozen in, and the results are remarkably insensitive to its specific value.
authors.affiliation: Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Jørgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Randrup
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Möller