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This book brings together various aspects of the nuclear fission phenomenon discovered by Hahn, Strassmann and Meitner almost 70 years ago. Beginning with an historical introduction the authors present various models to describe the fission process of hot nuclei as well as the spontaneous fission of cold nuclei and their isomers. The role of transport coefficients, like inertia and friction in fission dynamics is discussed. The effect of the nuclear shell structure on the fission probability and the mass and kinetic energy distributions of the fission fragments is presented. The fusion-fission process leading to the synthesis of new isotopes including super-heavy elements is described. The book will thus be useful for theoretical and experimental physicists, as well as for graduate and PhD students.

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From the contents: Introduction.- Potential Energy Surfaces.- Statistical Decay Model.- Scission Point Models.- Fission Dynamics.

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H. Krappe: Senior scientist at the Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin, 1966-1998; Visiting Scientist in Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1978-1979; collaboration with R. Nix on mass formulae and nuclear fission; Visiting Professor at the State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook, 1979.K. Pomorski: Professor at the Marie Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, 1972-(2015); Visiting Scientist in: the Int. Inst. for Nuclear Research in Dubna, 1976-1977; Technische Universität München, 1978-1980; Universität Regensburg, 1984-86; Institute for Nuclear Research in Strasbourg 1991-92; Visiting Professor at: the Technische Universität München, 1997/98 (DFG Fellow); The Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg 2001-2003 (12 months of the P.A.S.T. professeur)

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