https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-022-00879-4
Regular Article – Experimental Physics
Measurement of the half-life of 95mTc and the 96Ru (n, x) 95mTc reaction cross-section induced by D–T neutron with covariance analysis
1
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, China
2
Frontiers Science Center for Rare Isotopes, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, China
3
Key Laboratory of Nuclear Data, China Institute of Atomic Energy, 102413, Beijing, China
Received:
30
August
2022
Accepted:
31
October
2022
Published online:
15
November
2022
The half-life of 95mTc and the cross-sections of the 96Ru (n, x) 95mTc reaction induced by D–T neutrons were measured through the neutron activation technique in combination with off-line γ-ray spectrometry. The neutron beam was generated from the T (d, n) 4He reaction using the K-400 neutron generator at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP). Through exponential function fitting and a detailed discussion of the uncertainty evaluation, the measured half-life of 95mTc was 61.88 ± 0.22 days, which uncertainty is reduced greatly compared with the currently recommended value. Based on the determination of the 95mTc half-life, the cross-sections of 96Ru (n, x) 95mTc reaction at the 13.85 ± 0.2, 14.30 ± 0.2 and 14.72 ± 0.2 MeV neutron energies were measured relative to the 93Nb (n, 2n) 92mNb monitor reaction. Considering the correlations between different attributes, detailed uncertainty propagation was performed by the covariance analysis and the cross-sections were reported with their uncertainties and correlation matrix. Then, experimentally determined cross-sections were analyzed by comparing with the literature data available in the EXFOR database and theoretically calculated values using the TALYS-1.95 and EMPIRE-3.2.3 codes. The accuracy of current experimental results with the thorough uncertainties and covariance information is greatly improved, which is critical for verifying the reliability of the theoretical model and improving the quality of the nuclear database.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
