Neutron inelastic cross-section measurements for ${}^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$

The $\gamma$ production cross sections from neutron inelastic scattering on ${}^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$ were measured for neutron energies up to 18 MeV at GELINA (the Geel Linear Accelerator), the neutron source operated by EC-JRC-IRMM, Belgium. The level cross section and the total inelastic cross section were determined. We used the GAINS (Gamma Array for Inelastic Neutron Scattering) spectrometer with seven large-volume high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors placed at ${110}^{\circ }$ and ${150}^{\circ }$ with respect to the beam direction. The neutron flux was determined with a ${}^{235}\mathrm{U}$ fission chamber. The results are compared with calculations performed with the talys 1.6 code using the default settings.

Figure 1

Low excitation energy level scheme of ${}^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$ from the evaluated database [22]. The $\gamma$ transitions marked with continuous lines were observed in the experiment and their production cross section were measured.

Figure 2

The experimental and simulated (mcnp) efficiency using the point-like source, and the extended (mcnp) efficiency

Figure 3

The multiple scattering correction factor for the 1368.6 keV transition.

Figure 4

Integrated $\gamma$ production cross section for each observed transition. The red line represents the results of the present experiment while the green line displays the results of the talys 1.6 theoretical calculations using the default input parameters.

Figure 5

The production cross section for the first five excited levels compared with the talys 1.6 default calculations.

Figure 6

(b) Total inelastic cross section for the ${}^{24}\mathrm{Mg}\left(n,n^{\prime }\gamma \right){}^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$ reaction. The red line represents the result of our experiment, the green dots the results from the previous experiment of Korzh et al. (1994) [8], the dark blue line displays the evaluated values from ENDF/B-VII.1 [35], while the magenta line represents the talys 1.6 calculations. (a) The relative total uncertainties.

Figure 7

The resonance structure in the inelastic scattering cross section above the threshold. The red line represents our experimental values and the green line the results from CENDL-3.1 evaluation [37]