Open Access
Issue
ND 2007
2007
Article Number 016
Number of page(s) 4
Section Nuclear structure and decay data
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/ndata:07300
Published online 17 June 2008
International Conference on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology 2007
DOI: 10.1051/ndata:07300

Research on isomer decay with the NEPTUNE spectrometer

S. Oberstedt1, A. Oberstedt2, A. Plompen1, V. Semkova1, G. Lövestam1 and M. Gawrys3

1  EC-JRC Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements, 2440 Geel, Belgium
2  Department of Natural Sciences, Örebro University, 70182 Örebro, Sweden
3  Department of Fundamental Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Göteborg, Sweden

stephan.oberstedt@ec.europa.eu

Published online: 21 May 2008

Abstract
A new spectrometer has been built at the EC-JRC IRMM to investigate isomer decay in the millisecond range and activation cross sections of isotopes, where isomeric states exist and are populated. The spectrometer is equipped with high-resolution gamma-ray detectors and an ionisation chamber for the measurement of charged particles, e.g., fission fragments. NEPTUNE provides pulsed quasi mono-energetic neutrons at pulse repetition frequencies up to 5 kHz and tuneable neutron pulse widths ranging from 10 µs into the ms-region. For this purpose a beam chopper based on a parallel-plate capacitor has been integrated into the accelerator beam line in order to deflect the charged-particle beam onto a tantalum beam dump. First research has been performed with the NEPTUNE spectrometer dedicated to the shape isomer search in the odd-A uranium isotopes 235U, 237U and 239U. In further experiments the population of long-lived spin isomers was investigated.



© CEA 2008