Discovery of Delayed Nuclear Fission

    “Delayed nuclear fission along with spontaneous fission and spontaneously fissioning shape isomers belongs to the fission modes from low-lying excited states and provides the additional information on fission dynamics when fission nucleus excitation energy tends to zero.

    Fissionable products with half-lives in the minute range were discovered for the first time in the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in 1966 in the experiments on synthesis of neutron-deficient nuclei. Then nuclei were identified in the accelerated heavy ion beam reactions, and the conclusion was made that the ancestor nuclei of fissionable nuclides most probably experience the K-capture but produced daughter nuclei experience fission from the excited state. By analogy with delayed emission this kind of fission of neutron-deficient heavy nuclei far from β-stability line was called delayed fission.

    Discovery of Delayed Nuclear Fission was registered in the USSR as Discovery N160 with priority from July 12, 1971.
    The Authors: V.I.Kuznetsov, N.K.Skobelev, G.N.Flerov.”

    From “Delayed Nuclear Fission”. V.I.Kuznetsov, N.K.Skobelev. Physics of Elementary Particles and Atomic Nuclei, JINR PD. Vol.30, No.6, p.1514-1561, May 1999.
    download: [ pdf ] (1 189Kb)