FIGARO: MEASURING NEUTRON EMISSION SPECTRA WITH A WHITE NEUTRON SOURCE

Neutron emission spectra from reactions induced by fast neutrons are of importance in basic physics and applications. Very few data are available in the literature over a wide range of incident neutron energies such as produced with a white neutron source. The FIGARO facility at the WNR/LANSCE neutron source has been established to measure such neutron emission over a range of incident neutron energies from 1 to over 100 MeV. Using the time-of-flight technique twice (once to determine the incident neutron energy and again to determine the outgoing neutron energy), we are measuring neutron emission spectra for several reactions such as (n,n') and (n,f). Neutron emission from inelastic scattering gives information on the level density of excited states of the target nucleus. Our first measurements are on structural materials such as iron.