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Brownian shape motion on five-dimensional potential-energy surfaces: Nuclear fission-fragment mass distributions

Although nuclear fission can be understood qualitatively as an evolution of the nuclear shape, a quantitative description has proven to be very elusive. In particular, until now, there exists no model with demonstrated predictive power for the fission fragment mass yields. Exploiting the expected strongly damped character of nuclear dynamics, we treat the nuclear shape evolution in analogy with Brownian motion and perform random walks on five-dimensional fission potential-energy surfaces which were calculated previously and are the most comprehensive available. Test applications give good reproduction of highly variable experimental mass yields. This novel general approach requires only a single new global parameter, namely the critical neck size at which the mass split is frozen in, and the results are remarkably insensitive to its specific value.