87Y(n,γ) and 89,90Zr(n,γ) cross sections from a surrogate reaction approach

Abstract

The surrogate reaction approach is an indirect method for determining nuclear reaction cross sections which cannot be measured directly or predicted reliably. While recent studies demonstrated the validity of the surrogate reaction approach for studying fission cross sections for short-lived actinides, its applicability for radiative neutron capture reactions ((n,γ)) is still under investigation. We studied the γ decay of excited 88Y and 90,91Zr nuclei produced by 89Y(p,d), 91Zr(p,d), and 92Zr(p,d) reactions, respectively, in order to infer the 87Y(n,γ) and 89, 90Zr(n,γ) cross sections. The experiments were carried out at the K150 Cyclotron facility at Texas A&M University with a 28.5-MeV proton beam. The reaction deuterons were measured at forward angles of 25-60° with the array of three segmented Micron S2 silicon detectors. The compound nuclei with energies up to a few MeV above the neutron separation thresholds were populated. The coincident γ-rays were measured with the array of five Compton-suppressed HPGe clover detectors.