Speaker
Description
Neutron inelastic scattering is one of the major nucleon-nucleus interactions in the fast energy range, and its cross section constantly increases above the threshold energy of the first excited state up to a few MeV. Since the inelastic scattering process changes the momentum of interacting neutrons and produces characteristic gamma-rays, high quality nuclear data for this process are important in many applications. Experimental information available for evaluating the inelastic scattering cross sections is rather limited, e.g., the neutron inelastic scattering for a few isolated excited states and/or the gamma-ray productions for discrete transitions. To infer the total inelastic scattering process from this partial information, complementary theoretical modeling is essential, which includes the compound, pre-equilibrium, and direct reactions. Ongoing efforts on the theoretical development include the coupled-channels and DWBA methods for the direct reaction, the quantum-mechanical pre-equilibrium theories, the statistical Hauser-Feshbach decay for deformed targets, and so on. In this study we summarize these theories and their interconnection to better understand the whole inelastic scattering process, and demonstrate how the currently available model codes, EMPIRE, TALYS, CCONE, and CoH3, predict the inelastic scattering cross section.