Evidence of microscopic effects in fragment mass distribution in heavy ion induced fusion-fission reactions

Abstract

Our measurements of variances ($\sigma_{m}^2$) in mass distributions of fission fragments from fusion-fission reactions of light projectiles (C, O and F) on deformed thorium targets exhibit a sharp anomalous increase with energy near the Coulomb barrier, in contrast to the smooth variation of $\sigma_{m}^2$ for the spherical bismuth target. This departure from expectation based on a statistical description is explained in terms of microscopic effects arising from the orientational dependence in the case of deformed thorium targets.