Simultaneous Determination of Neutron-Induced Fission and Radiative Capture Cross Sections from Decay Probabilities Obtained with a Surrogate Reaction

• Published in: Physical review letters 2020-09, Vol.125 (12), p.1-122502, Article 122502
• Main Authors: Pérez Sánchez, R., Jurado, B., Méot, V., Roig, O., Dupuis, M., Bouland, O., Denis-Petit, D., Marini, P., Mathieu, L., Tsekhanovich, I., Aïche, M., Audouin, L., Cannes, C., Czajkowski, S., Delpech, S., Görgen, A., Guttormsen, M., Henriques, A., Kessedjian, G., Nishio, K., Ramos, D., Siem, S., Zeiser, F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Absorption cross sections; Angular momentum; Astrophysics; Emission; Nuclear astrophysics; Nuclear Experiment; Physics
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.122502

Reliable neutron-induced-reaction cross sections of unstable nuclei are essential for nuclear astrophysics and applications but their direct measurement is often impossible. The surrogate-reaction method is one of the most promising alternatives to access these cross sections. In this work, we successfully applied the surrogate-reaction method to infer for the first time both the neutron-induced fission and radiative capture cross sections of 239Pu in a consistent manner from a single measurement. This was achieved by combining simultaneously measured fission and γ-emission probabilities for the 240Pu (4He, 4He′) surrogate reaction with a calculation of the angular-momentum and parity distributions populated in this reaction. While other experiments measure the probabilities for some selected γ-ray transitions, we measure the γ-emission probability. This enlarges the applicability of the surrogate-reaction method.