Evidence for angular momentum depolarization and for enhanced sequential fission in the reaction /sup 197/Au(/sup 86/Kr, Z/sub 3/f)

At 618 MeV bombarding energy, large fission probabilities have been observed for recoil fragments heavier than the target. The probability of sequential fission seems to depend very strongly upon angular momentum as well as upon excitation energy. The out-of-plane widths of the fission fragments together with the above observation imply that a nearly random depolarization of the heavy-fragment angular momentum may occur during the deep-inelastic processes.