Recommended standards for gamma ray intensities

Abstract

Gamma ray data are used in more and more areas of application, and so over the years the demand for recommended gamma ray energies and intensities has increased. This paper proposes a list of gamma rays whose intensity is sufficiently well-known and they can be used for the calibration of gamma ray spectrometers and other applications; it is based on studies carried out by an international group of evaluators: the Decay Data Evaluation Project. One goal of this paper is to gather this set of data together in order to facilitate and generalize their use. In the first part, a brief description of the methodology followed throughout the evaluations is given, different methods of gamma ray intensity evaluation are presented, some typical examples of evaluations are shown; in the second part, the list of chosen nuclides is given along with their applications, and finally a list of recommended gamma ray intensities is presented.