Eur. Phys. J. A (2020) 56: 13
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-019-00010-0

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Measurement of ¹³⁹La(p,x) cross sections from 35–60 MeV by stacked-target activation

¹ Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
² Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

^* e-mail: jmorrell@berkeley.edu

Received: 19 September 2019
Accepted: 23 October 2019
Published online: 21 January 2020

Abstract

A stacked-target of natural lanthanum foils (99.9119% ¹³⁹La) was irradiated using a 60 MeV proton beam at the LBNL 88-Inch Cyclotron. ¹³⁹La(p,x) cross sections are reported between 35–60 MeV for nine product radionuclides. The primary motivation for this measurement was the need to quantify the production of ¹³⁴Ce. As a positron-emitting analogue of the promising medical radionuclide ²²⁵Ac, ¹³⁴Ce is desirable for in vivo applications of bio-distribution assays for this emerging radio-pharmaceutical. The results of this measurement were compared to the nuclear model codes TALYS, EMPIRE and ALICE (using default parameters), which showed significant deviation from the measured values.