Measuring Low Energy Nuclear Cross Sections using ICF

Inertial confinement fusion is a tool that can be used to for fundamental nuclear science measurements. In the method under consideration, nuclear reaction products in the expanding atomic gas following the target implosion will be collected and trapped using a turbomolecular pump. The beta-decay of reaction products with half-lives ranging between 20 ms and 10 s will be measured in-situ using a phoswich detector system milliseconds after the implosion. Several previously unmeasured low-energy deuterium and tritium radiative capture and stripping cross sections could be measured using this technique. To study the feasibility, several small scale experiments are being carried out at Houghton College and SUNY Geneseo to simulate the rapid release of gas by the ICF target, its subsequent capture and decay counting.