Abstract

After the discovery of the double-humped potential barrier, researchers have derived a host of expressions for the probability of tunnelling through such a barrier. It is generally believed that the penetrabilities obtained by using the various methods do not differ sufficiently to have significant effects on the analysis of experimental data on fission. However, some have expressed doubts concerning the use of the usual JWKB method and have offered improved approximate and Exact methods for developing penetrability expressions. This thesis is devoted to the quantitative comparison of penetrabilities from these expressions, and to the investigation of effects various methods will have on spontaneous and isomeric fission half-lives. Results from the penetrability expressions are compared in relation to the pure vibrational state energy levels, level heights, resonance widths, and the probability of penetrating the full barrier from its ground-state deformations