https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202023905003
Parameter Optimization and Sensitivity Studies of Spontaneous Fission with FREYA
1 Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA
2 Physics Department, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
3 Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
4 Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
5 Physics Department, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
6 Nuclear Engineering Department, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
e-mail: vogt2@llnl.gov
Published online: 30 September 2020
For many years, the state of the art for simulating fission in transport codes amounted to sampling from average distributions. However, such "average" fission models have limited capabilities. Energy is not explicitly conserved and no correlations are available because all particles are emitted independently. However, in a true fission event, the emitted particles are correlated. Recently, Monte Carlo codes generating complete fission events have been developed, thus allowing the use of event-by-event analysis techniques. Such techniques are particularly useful because the complete kinematic information is available for the fission products and the emitted neutrons and photons. It is therefore possible to extract any desired observables, including correlations. The fast event-by-event fission code FREYA (Fission Reaction Event Yield Algorithm) generates large samples of complete fission events, employing only a few physics-based parameters. A recent optimization of these parameters for the isotopes in FREYA that undergo spontaneous fission is described and results are presented. The sensitivity of neutron observables in FREYA to the input yield functions is also discussed and the correlation between the average neutron multiplicity and fragment total kinetic energy is quantified.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
