Open AccessEnergy-broadened proton beam for production of quasi-stellar neutrons from the7Li(p,n)7Be reaction
Author(s) -
G. Feinberg,
A. Shor,
D. Berkovits,
Y. Eisen,
M. Friedman,
G. Giorginis,
T. Hirsh,
A. Krása,
M. Paul,
A. Plompen,
E. Tsuk
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/337/1/012044
Subject(s) - van de graaff generator , proton , physics , neutron , nuclear physics , beam (structure) , nuclear reaction , atomic physics , neutron source , optics
Production of quasi-stellar neutrons by the 7Li(p,n)7Be reaction has been used for measuring s-process cross sections and efforts to upgrade the proton beam intensity with RF linear accelerators are presently ongoing. We investigated the effect of an energy-broadened proton beam, as is expected for a RF linear accelerator, on the produced 25-keV semi-Maxwellian neutron spectrum and compared it to that of a Van de Graaff accelerator with well-defined proton energy. Neutron spectrum measurements from 0○ to 80○ were carried out with a pulsed proton beam at the IRMM Van de Graaff accelerator using time-of-flight techniques, both with a narrow energy spread (sigma≈1.5 keV) proton beam and with an energy-broadened beam (sigma≈20 keV) obtained by straggling through a Au-foil degrader. In the latter case, the neutron spectrum is closer to the Maxwellian flux distribution in the high neutron energy region.JRC.D.4-Standards for Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguard