Speaker: Vivian Demetriou (Brussels Free University)

Microscopic study of fission for astrophysical applications

Under certain hydrodynamical conditions the r-process nucleosynthesis may produce very neutron-rich fissioning nuclei for which no experimental data are known. The need for an accurate and reliable theoretical prediction of the various fission properties of relevance for the r-process has led to the development of microscopic approaches for large-scale calculations. In this context, we present the fission barriers and fission half-lives obtained with a new Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method. In order to estimate the reliability of the existing global microscopic models, we perform a systematic comparison of fission half-lives and neutron-induced fission cross sections, based on large-scale microscopic calculations of barrier heights and nuclear level densities, with systematics and experimental data. Possible improvements are discussed.