Measurements of Thermal Neutron Capture Cross Sections of 136Ce, 156Dy, and 168Yb

Abstract

For several low abundance stable nuclei, the thermal neutron capture cross sections are not well measured, while the cross sections for isotopes with high abundances are already well measured. Our experiments, different from the commonly used method of using gold foil as reference, are performed using natural foils for which we know the relative abundances of all isotopes and thermal neutron capture cross sections. Therefore, we can obtain the cross sections of low abundance isotopes, which are not known well, by comparing the yields of gammas from the neutron captures by various isotopes in the foils. The advantage of this method is the cancellation of potential systematic errors from thermal neutron flux, flux profile, foil thickness, foil size, and irradiation time. We have measured the thermal capture cross sections of 136Ce, 156Dy, and 168Yb isotopes, using the high thermal neutron flux from the reactor HANARO at KAERI, and have obtained new cross section values of 7.64±0.63 barn for 136Ce, 14.8±2.0 barn for 156Dy, and 1335±43 barn for 168Yb.