Revised cross section of the ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}(\alpha , n){}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ reaction between 5 and 8 MeV

As suggested in a Comment by Peters [Phys. Rev. C 96, 029801 (2017)], a correction is applied to the ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}(\alpha ,n){}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ data of Harissopulos et al. [Phys. Rev. C 72, 062801(R) (2005)]. The correction refers to the energy-dependent efficiency of the neutron detector and appears only above the ($\alpha ,n_1$) threshold of the ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}(\alpha ,n){}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ reaction at about $E_{\alpha }\approx 5$ MeV. The corrected data are lower than the original data by almost a factor of 2. The correction method is verified using recent neutron spectroscopy data and data from the reverse ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}(n,\alpha ){}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ reaction.

Figure 1

Branching ratios $b_j$ for the ($\alpha ,n_j$) channels of the ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$($\alpha ,n$)${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ reaction as a function of energy $E_{\alpha }$ (lower part, a) and resulting correction factor $f_{\mathrm{corr}}$ from Eq. (2) for the cross sections of Ref. [7] (upper part, b).

Figure 2

Cross section of the ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$($\alpha ,n$)${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ reaction. The corrected data (blue diamonds) are significantly lower than the original data from Ref. [7] (light blue dots) for energies above the opening of the ($\alpha ,n_1$) channel at $E_{\alpha }\approx 5$ MeV. The new estimated ($\alpha ,n_0$) cross sections (red triangles) are close to the results which are obtained from the reverse ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$($n,{\alpha }_0$)${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ reaction (orange stars and green squares). For further discussion see text.