Energy-Angle Distributions



The old-fashioned approach of representing an energy-angle distribution as a product of an angular distribution (MF=4) and a secondary energy distribution (MF=5) is no longer adequate for modern evaluations. For incident energies larger than a few MeV, preequilibrium effects begin to appear, which lead to a coupling between the emission angle and the emission energy. In addition, it is sometimes necessary to have detailed information about the emission of other particles than neutrons, for example, the protons from an (n,n'p) reaction. The combination of File 4 and File 5 only allows one particle to be represented. Most modern evaluations are made with the help of a nuclear model code, such as GNASH, to complete the ranges of energy and angle that are not available from experiment. These codes follow all reaction channels and emitted particles, and it is important to have a way to include all the code results into the ENDF format. It was these kinds of arguments that led to the development of File 6 as introduced for the ENDF-6 format.

A section of File 6 is divided into subsections, one for each product. The products can include neutrons and light charged particles ordered by ZA, followed by residual nuclei ordered by ZA, followed by photons, followed by electrons:

        [MAT, 6, MT/ ZA, AWR, 0, LCT, NK, 0] HEAD 
        [MAT, 6, MT/ ZAP, AWP, LIP, LAW, NR, NP/ Eint/ Y(E)] TAB1 
            law-dependent data for product 1
            ----------------------------------
            repeat TAB1 and law-dependent data
            for the rest of the NK products
            ----------------------------------
        [MAT, 6, 0/ 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0, 0] SEND

The individual products are identified by ZAP, AWP, and LIP (to allow for isomers). The different representations allowed in a subsection are defined by the value of LAW:

  • LAW=0, Unknown distribution.;
  • LAW=1, Energy-angle distribution.;
  • LAW=2, Two-body angular distribution.;
  • LAW=3, Isotropic two-body distribution;
  • LAW=4, Recoil distribution for a two-body reaction;
  • LAW=5, Charged-particle elastic scattering;
  • LAW=6, N-body phase-space distribution; and
  • LAW=7, Laboratory angle-energy law.

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15 December 2012 T-2 Nuclear Information Service ryxm@lanl.gov