High energy γ emission in the spontaneous fission of 252Cf

The prompt γ emission in the spontaneous fission of 252Cf is characterized by an energy spectrum which extends up to 20 MeV. It was established that the spectrum presents in the neighbourhood of symmetric fission an intensity bump in the 3-8 MeV γ energy interval. The origin of this phenomenon is still not well understood, so that it was found interesting to carry out new measurements. The spectrum of the γ rays emitted in spontaneous fission of 252Cf has been measurement in the EUROGAM II multidetector using photovoltaic cells to detect fragments. The aim of the experiment was to investigate the γ yield enhancement which appears for mass fragment ratio near 132/120. This enhancement was found to be composed of two peaks located at 4 MeV and 5.5 MeV respectively. The results obtained confirm the intensity bound in the 3-8 MeV region but this augmentation reaches the maximum when the heavy fragment is near the mass 132. Beyond mass 140 the phenomenon diminish and the γ spectrum regains the behaviour expected for a statistic emission. The additional structure at 5.5 MeV does not vary with excitation energy while the excitation function of the 4 MeV structure is more structured and presents a maximum when the excitation energy is near 8 MeV. It is likely that all or part of this observed phenomenon is due to a particular excitation mode of this isotope associated for instance with a low energy dipole resonance. A theoretical study of this collective effect is under way