A study of actinide de-excitation through neutron emission from the deuteron induced fission of uranium-238.

摘要

The process of de-excitation of the actinides is a very important question in both pure and applied science. In this dissertation the process was studied using the neutrons emitted in coincidence with fission induced by the bombardment of 238U with 14.85 MeV deuterons. Neutrons can be emitted at multiple stages during the de-excitation process, with each stage producing its own unique neutron spectrum. The neutron spectrum in the lab frame is broken down into its constituent components using kinematic corrections to place them in their own reference frame.;It was found that 5.270 +/- 0.067 prompt neutrons are emitted per fission with an average source temperature of 1.094 +/- 0.011. In addition to the prompt neutrons spectrum, a pre-equilibrium component of 0.458 +/- 0.023 neutrons per fission was observed coming from a source with a temperature of 3.15 +/- 0.25 MeV. Unfortunately, the desired compound nucleus components were not resolvable because the magnitudes of the components were smaller than the magnitudes of the errors on the data.