Fission barriers of hot rotating nuclei: Theoretical predictions and experimental tests

Recent theoretical developments in calculating fission barriers of hot rotating nuclei and their experimental tests are reviewed. The discussions are limited to macroscopic fission models (no shell effects), since experimental tests come primarily from heavy-ion induced reactions involving large angular momenta and internal excitation energies. The physics of the rotating finite range models with temperature is emphasized and the predictions of our model are compared with those of other macroscopic models and with statistically deduced experimental results. The difficulties associated with the statistical model analysis at high temperatures are discussed. 43 refs., 8 figs., 1 tab