Theoretical investigation of fission fragment kinetic energy distributions in the symmetric mass region for 233U(nth,f)

Abstract

Fission yields are essential for nuclear reactor studies (decay heat, fuel inventory…) and constitute also one of the main observables needed to improve our understanding of the fission process. The symmetric mass region is of particular interest due to various intriguing properties of the fission fragments already reported in the literature : inversion of the nuclear charge polarization, large width of the fission fragment kinetic energy distribution, strong change of the prompt neutron multiplicity, etc. Recently, measurements of fission yields and kinetic energy distributions in the symmetric mass region were achieved at the LOHENGRIN mass spectrometer of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). This experimental work is challenging due to the low counting rate and the appearance of contaminant masses, leading to pronounced components in the fission fragment kinetic energy distribution. Despite removing the undesirable contributions, the fission fragment kinetic energy distributions still show two components, indicating that the fission process could be modal. To go further and better characterize these components a comparison between our experimental data and Monte Carlo calculations (FIFRELIN code) simulating the de-excitation of the fission fragments for different fission channels will be presented and discussed.