Sensitivity of fission barrier heights to nuclear matter properties
Abstract
We systematically investigate the correlations between nuclear fission properties and the surface energy coefficient asurf extracted from semi-infinite nuclear matter. To this end, we employ the covariant density functional theory based on a point-coupling energy density functional (EDF). Taking 240Pu and 236U as representative examples, we employ Gaussian-process emulators to construct the joint posterior distributions of asurf and selected fission observables, constrained by the ground state properties of the two nuclei. The results reveal a strong correlation between asurf and the fission barrier heights. A sensitivity analysis further shows that the height of the outer fission barrier is governed predominantly by the isoscalar-vector derivative coupling constant δV in the point-coupling EDF, whereas that of the inner barrier is by the combined effects of δV and several mutually correlated coupling constants.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026sensitivity,
title = {{Sensitivity of fission barrier heights to nuclear matter properties}},
author = {X. Zhang and K. Hagino and J. M. Yao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.05088},
eprint = {2610.05088},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05088},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Sensitivity of fission barrier heights to nuclear matter properties
AU - X. Zhang
AU - K. Hagino
AU - J. M. Yao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.05088
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05088
AB - We systematically investigate the correlations between nuclear fission properties and the surface energy coefficient a_surf extracted from semi-infinite nuclear matter. To this end, we employ the covariant density functional theory based on a point-coupling energy density functional (EDF). Taking ^240Pu and ^236U as representative examples, we employ Gaussian-process emulators to construct the joint posterior distributions of a_surf and selected fission observables, constrained by the ground state properties of the two nuclei. The results reveal a strong correlation between a_surf and the fission barrier heights. A sensitivity analysis further shows that the height of the outer fission barrier is governed predominantly by the isoscalar-vector derivative coupling constant δ_V in the point-coupling EDF, whereas that of the inner barrier is by the combined effects of δ_V and several mutually correlated coupling constants.
ER -