Fission of heavy Λ hypernuclei with the Skyrme–Hartree–Fock approach Original Research Article

Fission-related phenomena of heavy Λ hypernuclei are discussed with the constraint Skyrme–Hartree–Fock + BCS (SHF + BCS) method, in which a similar Skyrme-type interaction is employed also for the interaction between a Λ particle and a nucleon. Assuming that the Λ particle adiabatically follows the fission motion, we discuss the fission barrier height of View the MathML source. We find that the fission barrier height increases slightly when the Λ particle occupies the lowest level. In this case, the Λ particle is always attached to the heavier fission fragment. This indicates that one may produce heavy neutron-rich Λ hypernuclei through fission, whose weak decay is helpful for the nuclear transmutation of long-lived fission products. We also discuss cases where the Λ particle occupies a higher single-particle level.