Role of dynamic pairing correlations in fission dynamics

Abstract

We study the role of dynamic pairing correlations in fission dynamics by considering intrinsic Hartree-FockBogoliubov wave functions that are obtained by minimizing the particle number projected energy. For the restricted variational space, the set of self-consistent wave functions with different values of proton and neutron number particle fluctuations are considered. The particle number projected energy is used to define the potential energy surface for fission whereas collective inertias are computed within the traditional formulas for the intrinsic states. The results show that the effect of the restricted variation after particle number projection in the potential energy surface is small while collective inertias substantially decrease. On the other hand, we show that this quenching is strongly mitigated when Coulomb antipairing is considered and therefore the final outcome of the complete calculation is close to the plain mean field result without Coulomb antipairing. In the light of these beyond-mean-field calculations, the validity of traditional fission calculations is discussed.