  Recent developments, both in theoretical modeling and computational power,
have allowed us to make progress on a goal not fully achieved yet in nuclear
theory: a microscopic theory of nuclear fission. Even if the complete
microscopic description remains a computationally demanding task, the
information that can be provided by current calculations can be extremely
useful to guide and constrain more phenomenological approaches, which are
simpler to implement. First, a microscopic model that describes the real-time
dynamics of the fissioning system can justify or rule out some of the
approximations. Second, the microscopic approach can be used to obtain trends,
e.g., with increasing excitation energy of the fissioning system, or even to
compute observables that cannot be otherwise calculated in phenomenological
approaches or that can be hindered by the limitations of the method. We briefly
present in this contribution the time-dependent superfluid local density
approximation (TDSLDA) approach to nuclear fission, approach that has become a
very successful theoretical model in many areas of many-body research. The
TDSLDA incorporates the effects of the continuum, the dynamics of the pairing
field, and the numerical solution is implemented with controlled approximations
and negligible numerical corrections. The main part of the current contribution
will be dedicated to discussing the method, and recent results concerning the
fission dynamics. In addition, we present results on the excitation energy
sharing between the fragments, which are in agreement with a qualitative
conclusions extracted from a limited number of experimental measurements of
properties of prompt neutrons.
