Fission within the Time Dependent Superfluid Local Density Approximation

Abstract

This thesis investigates fission within the framework of the time- dependent superfluid local density approximation (TDSLDA), the most complete microscopic theory to describe low energy nuclear phenomena currently available. This work covers studies of fission for 236U, 240Pu, and 252Cf. We describe their general properties (for 236U, 240Pu): fission fragment (FF) masses, FF charges, TKE, and FF ex- citation energies; all essential ingredients for describing the properties of emitted neutrons, gammas, and de-excited FFs, all of which are directly measurable by experiment. We also investigated the angular momenta properties of the FFs (for all three systems), including the intrinsic spin distributions, role of orbital angular momenta, and directional correlations between the FF angular momenta vectors. Following, we discussed mathematical features of TDSLDA, including a discussion on chaos within TDSLDA, involving both fission and heavy ion collision case studies, and the role of entropy in TDSLDA. We conclude with a summary of key results, and potential future work.