Contribution to the determination of nuclear friction by studying the de-excitation of nuclei in the transient regime

An old idea of Kramers is to consider nuclear fission as a diffusion process in phase space corresponding to the collective variable of fission. The fission width is taken as an escape rate of the system over the barrier potential. The evolution of the distribution of this collective variable and its conjugate is governed by a Fokker-Planck equation. In a quasistationary treatment Kramers obtained a fission rate which differs from the result given by the transition state method by a friction dependent factor. The non quasistationary solution of the Fokker-Planck equation allows to obtain an escape rate that presents a transient regime: from zero it grows and reaches asymptotically the Kramers' value. This time-dependent fission width is included in a formalism that describes the deexcitation of the compound nucleus in order to calculate the neutron multiplicities in competition with fission. A sensitive friction-dependence of the multiplicities is obtained. Using this formalism and comparing the results with data of a recent experiment gives a good agreement; resolving the disagreement between data and the usual statistical model at high energy. A range of values of the friction coefficient is deduced