Speaker
Description
The new Device for Indirect Capture Experiments on Radionuclides at LANSCE: Efforts on measuring the resonance(s) responsible for the extremely large 88Zr(n,g) cross section
A. Stamatopoulos1, P. Koehler1, E. Bond2, T. A. Bredeweg2, A. Couture1, B. DiGiovine1, M. E. Fassbender2, A. C. Hayes-Sterbenz3, G. Keksis2, A. Matyskin2, K. Parsons4, G. Rusev2, J. Ullmann1, C. Vermeulen2
- Physics division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, NM, USA
- Chemistry division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, NM, USA
- Theory Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, NM, USA
- X-Computational Physics division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, NM, USA
The thermal neutron capture cross section of 88Zr was recently reported1 to be the second largest in nature with the largest resonance integral2 measured. Presumably, these very large values are caused by a resonance or resonances very near thermal energy, and determining their energies and widths, and hence the shape of the cross section away from thermal energy, would be very useful for applications. The short half-life (83.4 days) and associated large background renders direct measurements of the neutron capture cross section impossible using current techniques. However, it is possible to measure the total neutron cross section, and hence the resonance properties, using the newly commissioned Device for Indirect Capture Experiments on Radionuclides (DICER)3 at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). Transmission measurements are utilized as a surrogate method to perform capture measurements. The 88Zr needed for a DICER measurement was produced at the Isotope Production Facility (IPF) and cleanly separated from the production target material. The final steps of loading the ~1 g 88Zr sample into DICER and performing the measurement are expected to be completed very soon. A description of the new instrument and efforts on 88Zr will be presented.
- J. Shusterman et al., Nature volume 565, pages 328–330 (2019)
- J. Shusterman et al., Phys. Rev. C 103, 024614 (2021)
- A. Stamatopoulos et al., submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A (2021)
LA-UR-21-29581