Determination of integral cross sections of ³H in Al foils monitors irradiated by protons with energies ranging from 40 to 2600 MeV

¹ NRC Kurchatov Institute - Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia
² NRNU MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow, Russia
³ Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM 87545, USA
⁴ SCK·CEN, Boeretang, Mol, Belgium

Published online: 11 May 2016

Abstract

The results of ³H production in Al foil monitors (∼ 59 mg/cm² thickness) are presented. These foils have been irradiated in 15×15 mm polyethylene bags of ∼ 14 mg/cm² thickness together with foils of Cr (∼ 395 mg/cm² thickness) and ⁵⁶Fe (∼ 332 mg/cm² thickness) by protons of different energies in a range of 0.04 – 2.6 GeV. The diameters of all the foils were 10.5 mm. The irradiations were carried out at the ITEP accelerator U–10 under the ISTC Project # 3266 in 2006–2009. ³H has been extracted from Al foils using an A307 Sample Oxidizer. An ultra low level liquid scintillation spectrometer Quantulus1220 was used to measure the ³H β–spectra and the SpectraDec software package was applied for spectra processing, deconvolution and ³H activity determination. The values of the Al (p, x)³H reaction cross sections obtained in these experiments are compared with data measured at other labs and with results of simulations by the MCNP6 radiation transport code using the CEM03.03 event generator.