Nuclear theory for high-energy nuclear reactions of biomedical relevance

Abstract

A full description of all possible nuclear reactions that take place in a macroscopic device can only be accomplished with a nuclear model code in combination with key experimental data. To address this issue, the authors demonstrate some of the capabilities of TALYS, a nuclear reaction program which simulates nuclear reactions that involve neutrons, gamma rays, protons, deuterons, tritons, helions and alpha particles, in the 1 keV to 200 MeV energy range. A suite of nuclear reaction models has been implemented into a single code system, enabling to evaluate basically all nuclear reactions beyond the resonance range. The main nuclear models used, such as newly developed optical models, various compound nucleus, fission, gamma-ray strength, level density and pre-equilibrium models, all driven by a comprehensive database of nuclear structure parameters have been briefly mentioned. The predictive power of the code is demonstrated by comparing calculated results with a diverse set of experimental observables. The aim is to show that TALYS represents a robust computational approach that covers the whole path from fundamental nuclear reaction models to the creation of complete data libraries for nuclear applications.