A realistic determination of fission saddle-point shapes requires an exploration of a sufficiently large deformation space so that all a priori reasonable candidates for saddle-point shapes are included in the calculation. Until now no calculation has explored in a proper way a deformation space that is sufficiently complete to determine realistic fission saddle-point shapes. Here we calculate a five-dimensional grid of 1020000 deformation points. We find that the fission fragments that result from the breakup of the nucleus in some situations have already established their identity at the saddle point.

• Received 1 April 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.61.047602