Measuring neutron capture rates on ILL-produced unstable isotopes (¹⁴⁷Pm, ¹⁷¹Tm and ²⁰⁴Tl, and plans for ⁷⁹Se and ¹⁶³Ho) for nucleosynthesis studies

¹ Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain
² Instituto de Física Corpuscular, Paterna, Spain
³ Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
⁴ Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland
⁵ Soreq NRC, Yavne, Israel
⁶ Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France
⁷ Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
⁸ www.cern.ch/ntof

^* e-mail: jlerendegui@us.es

Published online: 14 November 2018

Abstract

Neutron capture cross sections are among the main inputs for nucleosynthesis network calculations. Although well known for the majority of the stable isotopes, this quantity is still unknown for most of the unstable isotopes of interest. A recent collaboration between ILL, PSI, U. Sevilla and IFIC aims at producing the isotopes of interest at ILL, preparing suitable targets at PSI, and measuring their capture cross sections at facilities such as n_TOF/CERN, LiLiT and the Budapest Research Reactor (BRR). This work is focused on the description of the different beams and techniques and shows some highlights of the preliminary results of the capture measurements on ¹⁷¹Tm, ¹⁴⁷Pm and ²⁰⁴Tl, along with the future plans for ⁷⁹Se and ¹⁶³Ho.