Fission modes of mercury isotopes

Background: Recent experiments on -delayed fission in the mercury-lead region and the discovery of asymmetric fission in 180Hg [A. N. Andreyev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 252502 (2010)] have stimulated theoretical interest in the mechanism of fission in heavy nuclei. Purpose: We study fission modes and fusion valleys in 180Hg and 198Hg to reveal the role of shell effects in the prescission region and explain the experimentally observed fragment mass asymmetry and its variation with A. Methods: We use the self-consistent nuclear density functional theory employing Skyrme and Gogny energy density functionals. Results: The potential energy surfaces in multidimensional space of collective coordinates, including elongation, triaxiality, reflection-asymmetry, and necking, are calculated for 180Hg and 198Hg. The asymmetric fission valleys well separated from fusion valleys associated with nearly spherical fragments are found in both cases. The density distributions at scission configurations are studied and related to the experimentally observed mass splits. Conclusions: The energy density functionals SkM and D1S give a very consistent description of the fission process in 180Hg and 198Hg. We predict a transition from asymmetric fission in 180Hg toward a more symmetric distribution of fission fragments in 198Hg. For 180Hg, both models yield 100Ru/80Kr as the mostmore » probable split. For 198Hg, the most likely split is 108Ru/90Kr in HFB-D1S and 110Ru/88Kr in HFB-SkM .« less