Heavy neutron-deficient radioactive beams: fission studies and fragment distributions

The secondary-beam facility of GSI Darmstadt was used to study the fission process of short-lived radioactive nuclei. Relativistic secondary projectiles were produced by fragmentation of a 1 A GeV 238U primary beam and identified in nuclear charge and mass number. Their production cross sections were determined, and the fission competition in the statistical deexcitation was deduced for long isotopical chains. New results on the enhancement of the nuclear level density in spherical and deformed nuclei due to collective rotational and vibrational excitations were obtained. Using these reaction products as secondary beams, the dipole giant resonance was excited by electromagnetic interactions in a secondary lead target, and fission from excitation energies around 11 MeV was induced. The fission fragments were identified in nuclear charge, and their velocity vectors were determined. Elemental yields and total kinetic energies have been determined for a number of neutron-deficient actinides and preactinides which were not accessible with conventional techniques. The characteristics of multimodal fission of nuclei around 226Th were systematically investigated and related to the influence of shell effects on the potential energy and on the level density between fission barrier and scission. A systematic view on the large number of elemental yields measured gave rise to a new interpretation of the enhanced production of even elements in nuclear fission and allowed for a new understanding of pair breaking in large-scale collective motion. (orig.)