Experimental analysis of neutron and background gamma-ray energy spectra of 80-400 MeV 7Li(p,n) reactions under the quasi-monoenergetic neutron field at RCNP, Osaka University

Abstract

To develop the 100-400 MeV quasi-monoenergetic neutron field, we measured neutron and unexpected gamma-ray energy spectra of the 7Li(p,n) reaction with 80-389 MeV protons in the 100-m time-of-flight (TOF) tunnel at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) cyclotron facility. Neutron energy spectra with energies above 3 MeV were measured by the TOF method, which had been reported in our previous papers, and photon energy spectra with energies above 0.1 MeV were measured by the automatic unfolding function of the radiation dose monitor DARWIN. For neutron spectra, the contribution of peak intensity to the total intensity integrated with energies above 3 MeV varied between 0.38 and 0.48 in the proton energy range of 80–389 MeV. For gamma-ray spectra, highenergetic gamma-rays at around 70 MeV originated from the decay of π0 were observed with proton energies higher than 200 MeV. For the 246-MeV proton incident reaction, the contribution of gamma-ray dose to neutron dose is negligible because the ratio of gamma-ray dose to neutron dose is 0.014.