Speaker
Description
Recent experimental innovations have driven major progress in nuclear fission research, a phenomenon fundamentally governed by the interplay of collective dynamics and quantum mechanical effects. Breakthroughs in inverse kinematics experiments alongside the development of complete detection setups now enable event-by-event reconstruction of the fission process with unprecedented precision. These advances provided access to new observables, including complete isotopic fission fragments distributions as a function of excitation energy, fission probabilities and manifold correlations between the properties of fission fragments and the neutrons and $\gamma$-rays they emit. Moreover, these techniques enable the study of unstable or short-lived fissioning systems, significantly expanding the range of nuclei which can be probed, and offering a path toward a comprehensive, potentially universal, description of the fission process across the nuclear chart. At the same time, recent results obtained with conventional approaches based on direct kinematics are providing increasingly accurate complementary information. Intense effort is invested to take advantage of the new findings for better constraining the theories which are being developed in parallel.
This presentation will review the main experimental advances achieved in recent years, including state of the art detection systems and modern analysis techniques. A selection of results that have reshaped our understanding of nuclear fission, or that continue to challenge long standing knowledge, will be presented. Current challenges and future opportunities for the field will also be discussed.