Viscosity and fission time scale of 156Dy at high excitation energies and large angular momenta

The reaction ⁴⁰Ar + ¹¹⁶Cd → ¹⁵⁶Dy ^∗ → fission was studied at beam energies E _b = 216 MeV and E _b = 238 MeV, wherein γ-rays were measured in coincidence with fission fragments. From these spectra the nuclear viscosity γ and fission time scale were deduced by comparing to statistical model calculations yielding viscosities in the range 0.01 < γ < 4 and fission time scales of the order of 10 ^-19 s.