Fission ofU238andPu240Nuclei Excited by Inelastic Alpha-Particle Scattering

Angular correlations have been measured for fission fragments emitted from nuclei excited by an ($\alpha , {\alpha }^{\prime }$) reaction. The angular correlations were measured as a function of the excitation energy of the fissioning nucleus. From an analysis of the results an attempt is made to identify the vibrational bands which are present in the transition-state spectrum below the energy necessary for two quasiparticle excitations. The transition-state spectrum which is obtained from the analysis is found to be consistent with previous ${\mathrm{Pu}}^{232}(d, pf)$ results.