Coincident Electrofission Cross Section forU238from 5 to 11.7 MeV

The ${}_{}{}^{238}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{U}(e, e^{\prime }f)$ cross section was measured for excitations between 5 and 11.7 MeV. The sum of the $E2\mathrm{}$ and $E0\mathrm{}$ strength functions was extracted with the aid of available ${}_{}{}^{238}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{U}(\gamma , f)$ data. The present results show that the $\frac{E2\mathrm{}}{E0\mathrm{}}$ strength in the fission channel is spread almost uniformly from 7 to 11.7 MeV. The $\frac{E2\mathrm{}}{E0\mathrm{}}$ strength that is found in the fission channel corresponds to 10% of the isoscalar $E2\mathrm{}$ sum rule; if the fission probability is 0.22, this energy region contains 45% of this sum.