Ternary fission of nuclei in the adiabatic approximation

On the basis of a generalization of integral formulas for nuclear-decay widths to the three-body case, the spontaneous and the low-energy induced ternary fission of nuclei are investigated by using the adiabatic approximation. The properties of energy distributions, of partial fission widths, and of the angular distributions of fission fragments are analyzed for the case of ternary fission. Conditions are found under which the angular distributions of two heavy fragments originating from ternary fission are similar to the analogous distributions of fragments originating from binary fission. The features of angular distributions are investigated, along with the parities and angular momenta of the third (light) ternary-fission fragment.