Search for scission neutrons in the spontaneous fission of252Cf

Abstract

In the spontaneous fission of ${}^{252}\mathrm{Cf},$ we observed that the population of spin $2^{+}$ in ${}^{136}\mathrm{Te}$ is closely correlated with the population of spin $4^{+}$ of its partner ${}^{114}\mathrm{Pd}.$ We attribute our results to the emission of two neutrons at scission carrying away two units of angular momentum and the yield is 0.06(2) per 100 spontaneous fission (SF) events whereas the two neutron normal fission yield is 0.12(3) per 100 SF for the ${}^{136}\mathrm{Te}$ and ${}^{114}\mathrm{Pd}$ pair. The yield for fission with four scission neutrons for ${}^{136}\mathrm{Te}$ and ${}^{112}\mathrm{Pd}$ is observed to be $\approx 0$ whereas the four neutron hot fission yield is 0.28(4) per 100 SF events.