Microscopic Description of Fission for the r-Process in Neutron Star Mergers

Fission barriers for a large number of nuclei have been extracted from Gogny D1M potential energy surfaces and compared to experimental data. The same data have been used to estimate spontaneous fission half-lives on the basis of the least-action path. An upgraded version of the SPY model for the calculation of the main observables related to fission fragments is also presented. Fission path and yields are key ingredients to estimate the composition of matter synthesized by the r-process nucleosynthesis in the ejecta of binary neutron star mergers.