Cross-section Measurements of Neutron-induced Inelastic Reactions on ¹²C

Neutron interactions within organic scintillator can be grouped into three primary categories: elastic scattering on hydrogen, elastic scattering on carbon, and inelastic scattering on carbon. The hydrogen elastic scattering is well understood, since these interactions produce significant light in the scintillator. The carbon interactions are significantly less understood, since carbon elastic scattering produces very little light in the detector, often below threshold, and because many of the inelastic reaction channels have not been studied, in particular for neutron kinetic energies above 20 MeV. This introduces uncertainty into neutron position reconstruction in experiments in which these detectors are used. To address this uncertainty, an experiment was conducted at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) using two spectroscopic diamond detectors. Cross-sections were determined for inelastic channels including ¹²C(n,α), ¹²C(n,p), ¹²C(n,d), and ¹²C(n,t). These measurements extend the empirically derived cross-section libraries to higher energies (20-100 MeV), which are relevant to the fast beam experiments performed at rare isotope facilities. These cross-sections have been implemented in the simulation code MENATE_R, improving the simulation's agreement with experimental data.