Unification of intermediate energy hadron spectra with small energy losses

Abstract
Proton beams near 1 GeV may serve as prolific generators of secondary neutrons, with some neutron energies near the beam energy. These very energetic secondary neutrons in turn may generate further reactions in thick samples. Direct measurement of the cross sections for GeV-scale neutrons is difficult, leading to uncertainties in flux calculations for many proposed applications. The present work uses a simple kinematic reaction model to form a scaling response suited to compare (p,nx) spectra for a wide range of beam energies, angles and target nuclei, to enable comparisons, interpolations and perhaps extrapolations of these difficult data. If the approximations of the method below are valid, one could also relate (p,nx) and easier (p,px) measurements.