Kriging approach for the experimental cross-section covariances estimation

In the classical use of a generalized χ2 to determine the evaluated cross section uncertainty, we need the covariance matrix of the experimental cross sections. The usual propagation error method to estimate the covariances is hardly usable and the lack of data prevents from using the direct empirical estimator. We propose in this paper to apply the kriging method which allows to estimate the covariances via the distances between the points and with some assumptions on the covariance matrix structure. All the results are illustrated with the 2555Mn nucleus measurements