Crystal blocking measurements of the time delay of fission induced by 32S, 48Ti, and 58Ni bombardment of W.

The time delay in fission induced by bombardment of W with 180 MeV 32S, 240-255 MeV 48Ti, and 315-375 MeV 58Ni has been measured by observation of crystal blocking. There is a clear narrowing and a small increase in the minimum yield of the angular dips for fission compared with scaled dips for elastically scattered ions. This is interpreted as a fission delay of about 2 as, only weakly dependent on energy and atomic number. The delay is longer by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude than obtained from standard interpretations of measurements of prescission neutrons and giant-dipole-resonance gamma rays and from calculations of the nuclear dynamics in heavy-ion reactions.