THE FISSION OF HEATED NUCLEI IN REACTIONS INVOLVING HEAVY-IONS - STATIC AND DYNAMICAL ASPECTS

The various aspects of the formation of the fragment mass-energy distr ibutions from the fission of excited nuclei in the range Z(2)/A = 20-4 3 in heavy-ion reactions are reviewed. These are: the actual temperatu re of the fissioning nucleus after the emission of prefission particle s, the effect of the angular momentum transferred to the nucleus by th e incident ion, the static features of the formation of the fragment d istributions of very light nuclei, the role and nature of dynamical ef fects in the descent of the nucleus from the saddle point to the sciss ion point in the case of heavy nuclei, and the properties of quasi-fis sion. A fairly complete summary is given of both the experimental data on all these aspects and the theoretical understanding based on curre nt ideas about the fission process. (C) 1998 American Institute of Phy sics.