Interaction of neutrons with zinc and its isotopes

Coherent neutron scattering lengths and total cross sections have been measured for elemental Zn,Zn-compounds and on isotopicly enriched samples for neutron energies from 0.5 meV up to 143 keV using different techniques. From the experimental data the following quantities were obtained:

the coherent scattering lengths (b in fm) of Zn (5.689±0.014);⁶⁴Zn (5.23±0.04);⁶⁶Zn (5.98±0.05);⁶⁷Zn (7.58±0.08;b ₊=9.4±0.5/5.8±0.5;b _?=5.0±0.7/10.1±0.7);⁶⁸Zn (6.04 ±0.03);

the potential scattering radii (R′ in fm) of Zn (6.2±0.2),⁶⁴Zn (6.0±0.3) and⁶⁶Zn (6.2 ±0.3);

the absorption cross sections (σ _γ at 0.025 eV in barn) of Zn (1.11±0.02);⁶⁴Zn (1.1 ±0.1) and⁶⁶Zn (0.62±0.06).

Derived quantities are the “zero energy” scattering cross sections (σ ₀ in barn) for Zn (4.128±0.010) and⁶⁷Zn (7.8±0.3) and the incoherent bound cross sections of Zn (0.061 ±0.023) and⁶⁷Zn (0.6±0.4). In the epithermal region the Zn-cross section can be described by introduction of two strong bound levels of⁶⁷Zn+n for which estimated parameters are given.     

The isotopes259106,260106, and261106

In irradiations of²⁰⁷Pb and²⁰⁸Pb, respectively, with⁵⁴Cr theα-decay of the isotopes²⁵⁹106,²⁶⁰106, and²⁶¹106 could be observed for the first time. For²⁶⁰106 a spontaneous fission branch of (50 _?20 ⁺³⁰ )% was observed. The isotopes were identified by genetic relationships of α-decay after separation in-flight with the velocity filter SHIP and implantation into a position-sensitive silicon surface-barrier detector. The measured partial fission halflife of the doubly even isotope²⁶⁰106 of (7.2 _?2.7 ^+4.8 )ms exceeds the predicted values by at least a factor of 40. This result could be explained by the high shell corrections of the ground state mass, derived from the measured α-decay energies. The experimental results show evidence for an island of purely shell stabilized nuclei in the region of deformed isotopes beyond the actinides.