Elastic neutron scattering studies at 96 mev on elements of interest for transmutation

Abstract

© Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence. Elastic neutron scattering from12C,14N,16O,28Si,40Ca,56Fe,89Y and 208Pb has been studied at 96 MeV in the 10-70 degree interval, using the SCANDAL (SCAttered Nucleon Detection AssembLy) facility. The results for 12C and 208Pb have recently been published, while the data on the other nuclei are under analysis. The achieved energy resolution, 3.7 MeV, is about an order of magnitude better than for any previous experiment above 65 MeV incident energy. A novel method for normalization of the absolute scale of the cross section has been used. The estimated normalization uncertainty, 3 %, is unprecedented for a neutron-induced differential cross section measurement on a nuclear target. Elastic neutron scattering is of utmost importance for a vast number of applications. Besides its fundamental importance as a laboratory for tests of isospin dependence in the nucleon-nucleon, and nucleon-nucleus, interaction, knowledge of the optical potentials derived from elastic scattering come into play in virtually every application where a detailed understanding of nuclear processes are important. Applications for these measurements are nuclear waste incineration, single event upsets in electronics and fast neutron therapy. The results at light nuclei of medical relevance (12C, 14N and 16O,) are presented separately. In the present contribution, results on the heavier nuclei are presented, among which several are of profound relevance to accelerator-driven systems for transmutation.