Determination of fission barrier height of Fr 210 and Ra 210 via neutron measurement

M. Veselský, P. Rubovič, V. Petousis*, H. Natal Da Luz, P. Burian, P. Mánek, L. Meduna, P. Smolyanskiy, R. Raabe, A. Camaiani, J. Klimo, O. Poleshchuk, A. Youssef, A. Ceulemans, M. Latif, M. Jandel, M. Bírová, A. Herzán, A. Špaček, M. VenhartM. G. Pellegriti, A. N. Andreyev, C. Page, G. A. Souliotis, R. Lica

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Fission barrier heights of short-lived nuclei away from line of β stability are not known reliably. Low-energy fission of Fr210 and Ra210, produced by (d,p) and (d,n) transfer reaction on the re-accelerated unstable beam Fr209 was investigated at HIE-ISOLDE. Four Timepix3 pixel detectors were installed on the body of the ACTAR TPC demonstrator chamber. Polyethylene converters were used for the detection of fast neutrons. Since no significant background was observed, it was possible to measure the spatial distribution of emitted neutrons reflecting the fission excitation function. Subsequent simulations employing the results of the talys code and available data on fission fragment distributions allowed to estimate directly the value of the fission barrier height for the neutron-deficient nucleus Fr210. This first direct measurement confirmed the reduction of the fission barrier compared to available theoretical calculations by 15-30%.

Original languageEnglish
Article number014618
Number of pages6
JournalPhysical Review C
Volume109
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jan 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Authors thank to the HIE-ISOLDE team for excellent beam. This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR Contract No. 21-24281S); by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement FiBRa – no. 101025651; and by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) and the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen (FWO) under the EOS Projects No. 30468642 and No. 40007501. A.H. would like to thank the Slovak Research and Development Agency for support under Contract No. APVV-20-0532, and the Slovak grant agency VEGA (Contract No. 2/0067/21).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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