Experimental neutron capture data of 58Ni from the CERN n_TOF facility

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia
² Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Bari, Italy
³ Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, Germany
⁴ Uniwersytet Łódzki, Lodz, Poland
⁵ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/IN2P3 - IPN, Orsay, France
⁶ Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Madrid, Spain
⁷ Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
⁸ Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA) Saclay - Irfu, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁹ European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
¹⁰ University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK
¹¹ Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
¹² Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
¹³ Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
¹⁴ National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece
¹⁵ Instituto de Física Corpuscular, CSIC-Universidad de Valencia, Spain
¹⁶ Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, Switzerland
¹⁷ Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
¹⁸ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, Italy
¹⁹ Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
²⁰ Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, India
²¹ Atominstitut, Technische Universität Wien, Austria
²² University of York, Heslington, York, UK
²³ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus Nord, Institut für Kernphysik, Karlsruhe, Germany
²⁴ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
²⁵ University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Austria
²⁶ Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l’energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA), Bologna, Italy
²⁷ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Bologna, and Sezione INFN di Bologna, Italy
²⁸ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Trieste, Italy
²⁹ Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering - IFIN HH, Bucharest - Magurele, Romania
³⁰ European Commission JRC, Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements, Retieseweg 111, B-2440 Geel, Belgium
³¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy - University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
³² Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso dell’INFN, Assergi (AQ), Italy
³³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Bologna, Italy

^a e-mail: pzugec@phy.hr

Published online: 28 May 2015

Abstract

The neutron capture cross section of ⁵⁸Ni was measured at the neutron time of flight facility n_TOF at CERN, from 27 meV to 400 keV neutron energy. Special care has been taken to identify all the possible sources of background, with the so-called neutron background obtained for the first time using high-precision GEANT4 simulations. The energy range up to 122 keV was treated as the resolved resonance region, where 51 resonances were identified and analyzed by a multilevel R-matrix code SAMMY. Above 122 keV the code SESH was used in analyzing the unresolved resonance region of the capture yield. Maxwellian averaged cross sections were calculated in the temperature range of kT = 5 – 100 keV, and their astrophysical implications were investigated.