Current topics in nuclear fission research

This year is the 50th anniversary of the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. From the point of view of the fundamental physics research, nuclear fission was one of the oldest motivation of the nuclear physics. In this 50 years, many aspects of nuclear fission phenomena have been investigated. Owing to the nature that the nuclear fission involves a dynamical treatment of finite-many-body systems, there have been always some challenging new topics in nuclear fission research in these 50 years. By solving these problems one by one, we have come closer to the understanding of the nuclear fission dynamics. As examples of current topics in nuclear fission research, I will choose and discuss the following three: 1) Cold fission phenomena. 2) Heavy-particle radioactivity phenomena. 3) Transient effect phenomena. (author)