Energy Spectra of Correlated Fragment Pairs from the Spontaneous Fission of CF252

Silicon surface barrier counters have been used in conjunction with specially-designed low noise amplifiers to measure the energies of correlated fragment pairs from the spontaneous fission of Cf
²⁵²
. The silicon counters, ¼" × ¼" in size and prepared from 3600 ohm-cm material, exhibit rise times for fission pulses of a few nanoseconds; the pulse height resolution obtained for natural alpha particles is 0.5 percent. The energy response of the present counters to fission fragments appears to be slightly non-linear. Pulses from coincident fragment pairs are analyzed and recorded in a 100 × 100 channel coordinate recorder. Approximately 3 × 10
⁵
events have been recorded on punched paper tape and sorted on the ORACLE. Preliminary results including the deduced relative mass yields are shown, as well as pulse-height and energy spectra.