Nuclear fission; A Review of experimental advances and phenomenology

Andreyev, A. N.; Nishio, Katsuhisa   ; Schmidt, K.-H.*

In the last two decades, through technological, experimental and theoretical advances, the situation in experimental fission studies has changed dramatically. With the use of advanced production and detection techniques both much more detailed and precise information can now be obtained for the traditional regions of fission research and, crucially, new regions of nuclei have become routinely accessible for fission studies. This work first of all reviews the recent developments in experimental fission techniques, in particular the resurgence of transfer-induced fission reactions with light and heavy ions, the emerging use of inverse-kinematic approaches, both at Coulomb and relativistic energies, and of fission studies with radioactive beams. The emphasis on the fission-fragment mass and charge distributions will be made in this work, though some of the other fission observables, such as prompt neutron and -ray emission will also be reviewed. The review will conclude with the discussion of the new experimental fission facilities which are presently being brought into operation, along with promising "next-generation" fission approaches, which might become available within the next decade.