Fission fragment spectroscopy by measurements in nuclear track detectors applied to the fission of silver induced by 80 MeV alpha particles

Abstract

A method is presented for the analysis of track length distributions in mica track detectors and track diameter distributions in glass detectors, produced by the fission fragments of medium mass nuclei. Measured distributions are compared with distributions calculated from trial values for the total kinetic energy release, the center-of-mass motion, and the form of the fragment mass distributions. A FORTRAN computer program has been written that calculates the relevant quantities for the fission process under study and incorporates the characteristics of the stopping process of the fragments. The resulting calculated track length and track diameter distributions show only a moderate sensitivity towards the shape of the fragment mass distribution. A simple fitting procedure is shown to give estimates of the total kinetic energy release as well as of the center-of-mass motions for medium mass fissioning systems. The method is applied to data from the 80 MeV alpha-particle-induced fission of silver, and yields a value for the total kinetic energy release of this system which is higher than present theoretical estimates.