Low mass fragments from 252Cf spontaneous fission

An experimental arrangement for the investigation of light charged particles from ternary fission or for searching for superasymmetric binary fission products is presented. Using a time-of-flight/energy spectrometer low mass fission products were looked for in the 252Cf spontaneous fission. For the expected most probable superasymmetric fission fragment 48Ca an upper limit for the superasymmetric decay branch relative to alpha emission was deduced. Measured distributions of light products with masses around A = 13, A = 18 and A = 31 and with yields of Y = 10-5, Y = 1.5 · 10-5 and Y 3 · 10-6 respectively, were ascribed to ternary fission. (author)