Neutron capture and total cross-section measurements and resonance parameter analysis of niobium-93 below 400 eV

ABSTRACT

Neutron capture yields and transmission ratios of ⁹³Nb were measured by applying the time-of-flight method using the Accurate Neutron-Nucleus Reaction measurement Instrument of the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex. Nb metal foils were used as samples. Germanium gamma-ray and Li-glass neutron detectors were used for capture yields and transmission ratio measurements, respectively. The pulse height weighting technique was applied to deduce the capture cross-sections from 0.01 to 400 eV, and the thermal-neutron capture cross-section was determined to be 0.97 ± 0.11 b. The total cross-sections were derived from transmission ratios ranging from 0.2 to 400 eV. The resonance parameters of ⁹³Nb below 400 eV were determined based on the obtained capture cross-sections and transmission ratios using the resonance analysis code, REFIT, and compared with the parameters given by past measurements and the evaluated nuclear data library, JENDL-4.0.

KEYWORDS:

• Neutron total cross-section
• neutron capture cross-section
• time-of-flight method
• niobium-93
• J-PARC MLF ANNRI
• pulse-height weighting technique
• REFIT

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank staff for their efforts in operating the accelerators and the neutron production target of the J-PARC/MLF. The neutron experiments at the J-PARC/MLF were performed under the user program (Proposals No. 2019P0100, 2020P0100).

Notes

1. The authors would like to correct the unit of $I$ in Terada et al. [25]. The unit of $I$ was MeV, not channel number which had the same meaning as keV.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17H01076.