Measurement of Charged-Particle Emission Double-Differential Cross Section of Fluorine for 14.2MeV Neutrons

Abstract

We carried out detailed measurement of the double-differential cross sections of fluorine for the emissions of protons, deuterons, tritons, and α-particles with 14.2MeV incident neutrons. An improved charged-particle spectrometer with a pencil DT-neutron beam furnished at the FNS facility of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency enabled us to obtain precise data with a fine energy resolution over a wide energy range and an angular range from 15 to 150°. The present experiment is the first simultaneous measurement of the four different kinds of charged particles and provides useful data to establish a nuclear reaction model of fluorine as well as to confirm previous experimental data. Angular-differential cross sections for several discrete peaks corresponding to excited states of residual nuclei were extracted to discuss the reaction mechanism of charged-particle emission. The obtained data suggest that the charged-particle emission reaction of fluorine has a complicated mechanism in which there are contributions from the direct reaction, pre-equilibrium, and equilibrium processes. The obtained data were compared with the nuclear data evaluated in JENDL-3.3 and ENDF/B-VII.0. The results show large differences in the energy and angular distributions of emitted particles and the charged-particle production cross sections between the measured and evaluated data.