Surveying post-saddle nuclear dissipation with protons and α particles as probes

Using a Langevin model, we calculate post-saddle proton and α-particle multiplicities as a function of the post-saddle dissipation strength (β) for the heavy systems ²³⁴Cf, ²⁴⁰Cf, ²⁴⁶Cf and ²⁴⁰U. We find that, with increasing isospin of the system, the sensitivity of post-saddle light charged-particle multiplicities to β decreases considerably and, moreover, for ²⁴⁰U the charged-particle multiplicities are no longer sensitive to β. These results suggest that in order to determine the post-saddle friction strength more accurately by measuring the multiplicities of pre-scission protons and α particles, it is best to populate those heavy compound systems with low isospin.