A particle-number conserving microscopic approach to fission barriers of heavy nuclei

Fission barriers of the heavy nuclei $^{240}$Pu have been investigated in the framework of the highly truncated diagonalization approach (HTDA), which is suited to treat the correlations in an explicitly particle-number-conserving microscopic approach. A Skyrme energy density functional has been used for particle-hole channel, whereas a density independent $\delta$ force has been adopted for the residual interaction. The obtained fission barriers heights are compared with those obtainedin HF+BCS approach and the experimental data