Influence of shell energy on the dynamic model of asymmetric fission

The recently investigated dynamic model with a shell correction added to the liquid-drop potential allows the low-energy fission process of heavy nuclei to be described. The shell-correction term was taken to be the sum of the Myers and Swiatecki shell energies of two clusters in the compound nucleus undergoing fission, multiplied by an arbitrary attenuation factor which is equal to unity at the scission point and vanishes approximately at the saddle point. In this paper, the influence of the shell-energy correction term is studied, with special reference to the effect of its attenuation factor on results such as the mass distribution. For a vanishing shell correction the mass distribution is symmetric, whereas a full shell correction (attenuation factor equal to unity everywhere) yields the most asymmetric mass distribution. (author)