Entropy-driven excitation-energy sorting in superfluid fission dynamics

K.-H. Schmidt (1) , B. Jurado (2)

1 Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt
2 CENBG - Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan

It is shown that the constant-temperature behaviour of nuclei in the superfluid regime leads to an energy-sorting process if two nuclei are in thermal contact, as is the case in the fission process. This effect explains for the first time why an increase of the initial excitation energy leads an increase of the number of emitted neutrons from the heavy fission fragment, only. The observed essentially complete energy sorting may be seen as a new counter-intuitive manifestation of quantum-mechanical properties of microscopic systems.

Domaines: Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

K.-H. Schmidt, B. Jurado. Entropy-driven excitation-energy sorting in superfluid fission dynamics. Physical Review Letters, 2010, 104, pp.212501. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.212501⟩. ⟨in2p3-00486883⟩