Effect of the initial excitation energy on the average fission lifetime of nuclei

The dependence of the fission time on the initial nuclear excitation energy E _{tot 0} ^* is studied on the basis of a refined combined dynamical and statistical model. It is shown that this dependence may be nonmonotonic, in which case it features a broad maximum. It turns out that the form of the average fission time 〈t _f 〉 as a function of E _{tot 0} ^* depends greatly on the orbital angular momentum L _n carried away by prescission neutrons.