Getting to Know Nuclear Fission

Nuclear fission, while well known for the energy it can produce, is not yet well understood,

even 80 years after its discovery.  The fission process, involving three of the four known forces

of nature, is very complex and different parts of the process take place over very different time

scales, each of which has its own signatures.  I will provide a brief overview of our

understanding of nuclear fission and then discuss how it influences the abundance of elements

in the universe and production of new elements in the periodic table. I will then give a

description of what happens during a fission event, from start to finish. Finally, I will give

examples of fission observables that can be addressed by a complete event fission model such

as the FREYA model. I will show some examples of correlated observables that can be modeled

with generators such as FREYA and also mention a current hot topic in fission: the generation of

fragment angular momentum.