Remarks on a quantum mechanical treatment of internal excitation in low energy nuclear fission

Internal excitations of the fissioning nucleus are usually described phenomenologically by friction terms. In the present paper an approach is discussed which is in principle based on a correct quantum mechanical treatment taking the projection form of the Schrödinger equation as a starting point. Considering nuclear fission as an almost adiabatic process an estimate for the friction energy is made. In this very crude estimate only 10–15% of the collective energy gain in going from the saddle to the scission point is transformed into internal excitation energy. This is in agreement with experimental data showing pronounced substructure effects which would be destroyed in the presence of a larger friction. As compared to other microscopic calculations, in the present work the total Hamiltonian is split in such a way that the only perturbation term being responsible for the deformation is essentially the Coulomb energy. By this assumption the calculation of transition probabilities to intrinsically excited states becomes rather insensitive to the exact excitation energy spectrum of the compound nucleus.