Gold neutron-capture cross section from 3 to 550 keV

Au197(n,γ) cross section in the unresolved resonance region

“…Also, the ratio of the two data sets is shown. While the top and middle panels shows that the cross sections obtained in this work are systematically higher up to 100 keV, the zoom into the region from 8 to 40 keV with a resolution of 250 bins per decade in the bottom panel demonstrates that the cross-section fluctuations reported by Macklin et al [2,3] are quantitatively confirmed by the present data. The origin of these structures is discussed in Sec.…”

“…In view of the discrepancy between the ENDF evaluation and the accurate cross sections reported by Macklin et al [2,3] and by Ratynski and Käppeler [4], the following discussion concentrates on these measurements. The comparison with the first of these data sets is particularly illustrative because the energy-dependent cross section provides a more stringent test compared to the spectrum-averaged result.…”

“…The evaluation of the standard cross section is based on available experimental data, including absolute measurements and information from relative measurements and from measurements of cross-section ratios. Although the evaluation covers the lower kilo-electron-volt region above the resolved resonance region as well, it is not a recommended standard below 200 keV due to discrepancies of 6%-8% compared to results, which were essentially obtained in two well-designed experiments, a time-of-flight (TOF) measurement at Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator (ORELA) [2,3] and an activation measurement at the Karlsruhe Van de Graaff accelerator [4], which agree within 1.5%.…”

“…9, the present results and the data of Refs. [2,3] are plotted with the same binning to facilitate the direct comparison. Also, the ratio of the two data sets is shown.…”

“…The TOF measurement of Macklin [2,3] was performed in the energy range from thermal up to 2 MeV with the intention of establishing an accurate (n,γ ) cross section for use as a standard. The experiment was carried out with the pulse-height-weighting technique (PHWT) [5] at the 40-m station of the ORELA facility.…”