Competing analysis of α and 2p2n-emission from compound nuclei formed in neutron induced reactions

Abstract

The decay mechanism of compound system 61Ni⁎ formed in fast neutron induced reactions is explored within the collective clusterization approach of the Dynamical Cluster-decay Model (DCM) in reference to a recent experiment over an energy spread of En=1–100 MeV. The excitation functions for the decay of the compound nucleus 61Ni⁎ formed in the n+Ni60 reaction show a double humped variation with incident beam energy where the peak at lower energy corresponds to α-emission while the one at higher energy originates from 2p2n-emission. The experimentally observed transmutation of α-emission at lower energy into 2p2n-emission at higher incident energies is explained on the basis of temperature dependence of the binding energies used within the framework of DCM. The cross-sections for the formation of the daughter nucleus 57Fe after emission of α-cluster from the 61Ni⁎ nucleus are addressed by employing the neck length parameter (ΔR), finding decent agreement with the available experimental data. The calculations are done for non-sticking choice of moment of inertia (INS) in the centrifugal potential term, which forms the essential ingredient in DCM based calculations. In addition to this, the effect of mass (and charge) of the compound nucleus is exercised in view of α and 2p2n emission and comparative study of the decay profiles of compound systems with mass A = 17–93 is employed to get better description of decay patterns.