https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-024-01353-z
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Effects of shape/phase transition regions on neutron capture cross sections
1
Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
2
Department of Physics, Istanbul University, 34134, Istanbul, Turkey
3
Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, D-69117, Heidelberg, Germany
4
Wright Lab, Yale University, 06520, New Haven, CT, USA
Received:
7
March
2024
Accepted:
29
May
2024
Published online:
2
July
2024
A recent study found a new, purely empirical correlation between two-neutron separation energies and neutron capture cross sections in keV neutron energy regimes. In shape/phase transition regimes, such as that near A= 150, S
values show an anomaly—a flattening of the normal near linear decrease with neutron number. This paper addresses two questions: (1) Using this new correlation, is this anomaly in S values sizeable enough to produce an observable effect in capture cross sections? and (2) Can the correlation be used to quantitatively reproduce the cross sections in the transition region? It is found that the answer to both questions is in the affirmative. Possible relations to the r-process are briefly discussed.
© The Author(s) 2024
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
