Abstract
The measurement of neutron-induced cross sections of short-lived nuclei is extremely difficult due to the radioactivity of the samples. The surrogate reaction method is an indirect way of determining cross sections for nuclear reactions that proceed through a compound nucleus. This method presents the advantage that the target material can be stable or less radioactive than the material required for a neutron-induced measurement. We have successfully used the surrogate reaction method to extract neutron-induced fission cross sections of various short-lived actinides. In this work, we investigate whether this technique can be used to determine neutron-induced capture cross sections in the rare-earth region.
Highlights
Neutron-induced radiative-capture cross sections of short-lived nuclei are crucial for fundamental nuclear physics and for applications such as reactor physics and astrophysics
Applying a threshold to the gammaenergy in order to suppress the contribution of the (3He, pnγ)175Lu* channel, this ratio remains essentially constant from E*=5.5 MeV to Sn, see figure 3
The big discrepancies found at low E* can be explained by the differences between the spin distributions populated in transfer and neutron-induced reactions
Summary
Neutron-induced radiative-capture cross sections of short-lived nuclei are crucial for fundamental nuclear physics and for applications such as reactor physics and astrophysics. These data are needed to test s- and r-process models. The surrogate reaction method is an indirect way of determining cross sections for compound nuclear reactions. The left part of figure 1 illustrates a neutron-induced reaction on target A-1, which leads to the compound-nucleus A at an excitation energy E*. On the right part of figure 1, in the surrogate reaction method, the same compound nucleus A* is produced by a transfer reaction between a projectile y (a light charged particle) and a target X.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
