ANGULAR MOMENTA OF NEAR-SPHERICAL FISSION FRAGMENTS

Abstract

Angular momenta of fission fragments are sometimes exceeding 10 ℏ for thermal neutron induced and spontaneous fission. This is surprising since in the latter case the mother nucleus may have zero spin (e.g. 252Cf). In theory fragment spins are explained as a quantum mechanical effect. It is argued that they are due to zero-point oscillations of fragments being deformed at scission. In contrast to current theory it is shown that, for the specific case of near-magic 132Te, a large spin is generated by thermal excitation of single-particle states.