Coupled fission fragment angular momenta

Abstract

Nuclear fission produces fragments whose spins are coupled to the relative angular motion via angular momentum conservation. It is shown how ensembles of such spins can readily be obtained by either direct microcanonical sampling or by sampling of the associated normal modes of rotation. The resulting distribution of the spin-spin opening angle is illustrated in various three- and two- dimensional scenarios and it is demonstrated how recent mutually conflicting model calculations can be well reproduced with different assumptions about the scission geometry.