Recent developments of the FALSTAFF experimental setup

The study of nuclear fission is encountering renewed interest with the development of GEN-IV reactor concepts, mostly working in the neutron fast energy domain. To support the fast reactor technologies, new high quality nuclear data are needed. New facilities are being constructed to produce high intensity neutron beams from hundreds of keV to few tens of MeV (Licorne, NFS, nELBE, ...). They will open new opportunities to provide nuclear data. In this framework the development of an experimental setup called FALSTAFF for a characterisation of actinide fission fragments has been undertaken. Fission fragment yields and associated neutron multiplicities will be measured as a function of the neutron energy. Based on time-of-flight and residual energy technique, the setup will allow the simultaneous measurement of the complementary fragment velocity and energy. The FALSTAFF setup and the upgrade of the first arm prototype with the new ionisation chamber CALIBER will be presented. The performances of the experimental apparatus is discussed

Short-lived binary splits of an excited projectile-like fragment induced by transient deformation

Expérience GANILAligned fragment emission associated with peripheral and midperipheral dissipative collisions of 124Xe+124Sn at E/A = 50 MeV is examined. Binary decay of the excited projectile-like fragment (PLF∗) is correlated with significant velocity damping from the projectile velocity. Both a forward emission component, attributed to standard statistical emission, and a backward component are observed. The backward component arises from both statistical and dynamical decay processes. This backward component manifests a strong alignment with the direction of the PLF∗ velocity and is found to depend sensitively on the atomic number of the light fragment, ZL, and the velocity of the PLF∗. The yield of the backward component is significantly enhanced relative to the forward component. The composition of fragments emitted in the backward direction reveals that a correlation between alignment and neutron excess exists for fragments with Z < 8. From the measured asymmetry of the angular distributions, the angular distribution for dynamical fragment emission is deduced. Comparison with a schematic one-dimensional Langevin model allows extraction of both the magnitude and the dependence on ZL of the transient initial deformation of the PLF∗. Fragment emission times of the order of 0.25–1.5 × 10−21 s are extracted

The Neutrons for Science Facility at SPIRAL-2

The neutrons for science (NFS) facility is a component of SPIRAL-2, the new superconducting linear accelerator built at GANIL in Caen (France). The proton and deuteron beams delivered by the accelerator will allow producing intense neutron fields in the 100 keV–40 MeV energy range. Continuous and quasi-mono-kinetic energy spectra, respectively, will be available at NFS, produced by the interaction of a deuteron beam on a thick Be converter and by the 7Li(p,n) reaction on thin converter. The pulsed neutron beam, with a flux up to two orders of magnitude higher than those of other existing time-of-flight facilities, will open new opportunities of experiments in fundamental research as well as in nuclear data measurements. In addition to the neutron beam, irradiation stations for neutron-, proton- and deuteron-induced reactions will be available for cross-sections measurements and for the irradiation of electronic devices or biological cells. NFS, whosefirst experiment is foreseen in 2018, will be a very powerful tool for physics, fundamental research as well as applications like the transmutation of nuclear waste, design of future fission and fusion reactors, nuclear medicine or test and development of new detectors

Studies of fission fragment yields via high-resolution γ\gamma-ray spectroscopy

Precise spectroscopic information on the fast neutron induced fission of the 238U(n,f) reaction was recently gained using a new technique which involved coupling of the Miniball high resolution y-ray spectrometer and the LICORNE directional neutron source. The experiment allowed measurement of the isotopic fission yields for around 40 even-even nuclei at an incident neutron energy of around 2 MeV where yield data are very sparse. In addition spectroscopic information on very neutron-rich fission products was obtained. Results were compared to models, both the JEFF-3.1.1 data base and the GEF code, and large discrepancies for the S1 fission mode in the Sn/Mo isotope pair were discovered. This suggests that current models are overestimating the role played by spherical shell effects in fast neutron induced fission. In late 2017 and 2018 the nu-ball hybrid spectrometer will be constructed at the IPN Orsay to perform further experimental investigations with directional neutrons coupled to a powerful hybrid Ge/LaBr3 detector array. This will open up new possibilities for measurements of fission yields for fast-neutron-induced fission using the spectroscopic technique and will be complimentary to other methods being developed