Eur. Phys. J. A (2015) 51: 179
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2015-15179-7

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Capture and fission with DANCE and NEUANCE

Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA

^* e-mail: mjandel@lanl.gov

Received: 22 May 2015
Accepted: 19 August 2015
Published online: 23 December 2015

Abstract

A summary of the current and future experimental program at DANCE is presented. Measurements of neutron capture cross sections are planned for many actinide isotopes with the goal to reduce the present uncertainties in nuclear data libraries. Detailed studies of capture gamma rays in the neutron resonance region will be performed in order to derive correlated data on the de-excitation of the compound nucleus. New approaches on how to remove the DANCE detector response from experimental data and retain the correlations between the cascade gamma rays are presented. Studies on ²³⁵U are focused on quantifying the population of short-lived isomeric states in ²³⁶U after neutron capture. For this purpose, a new neutron detector array NEUANCE is under construction. It will be installed in the central cavity of the DANCE array and enable the highly efficient tagging of fission and capture events. In addition, developments of fission fragment detectors are also underway to expand DANCE capabilities to measurements of fully correlated data on fission observables.