Fission barriers in the neutron-proton isospin plane for heavy neutron-rich nuclei

We discuss the sensitivity of fission barrier for heavy neutron-rich nuclei to fission paths in the two-dimensional neutron-proton quadrupole plane. To this end, we use the constrained Skyrme-Hartree-Fock + BCS method, and examine the difference of fission barriers obtained with three constraining operators, that is, the neutron, proton, and mass quadrupole operators. We investigate ²²⁰U, ²³⁶U, and ²⁶⁶U, that is relevant to r-process nucleosynthesis. We find that the fission barrier heights are almost the same among the three constraining operators even for neutron-rich nuclei, indicating that the usual way to calculate fission barriers with the mass quadrupole operator is well justified. We also discuss the difference between proton and neutron deformation parameters along the fission paths.