Microscopic theory of nuclear fission
In fission a heavy nucleus stretches, forms a neck and snaps into two fragments, and physicists still cannot compute this process from the forces between protons and neutrons alone. The open questions concern how the fragments end up spinning, how the released energy is split between them, and how high the energy barrier to fission is for nuclei never made in the lab.
Why it matters
Fission powers reactors, decides the fate of the heaviest elements and of nuclei in neutron-star mergers, and is the hardest test of nuclear many-body dynamics.
Review
N. Schunck and D. Regnier, Theory of nuclear fission, Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ppnp.2022.103963 reference checked
Timestamp record
- Signed record
- 4682ec98f6ef…
- Public log
- Entry 284, in checkpoint 2,123
- In the log by
- Block 969,698, 2026-10-03
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