Analysis of the excitation functions of (α, xnyp) reactions on natural copper

Excitation functions of the reactions⁶³Cu[(α, n), (α, 2n)+(α, pn)] and⁶⁵Cu[(α, n), (α, 2n), (α, 3n), (α, 4n)+(α, p3n)] were investigated up to 50 MeV using stacked foil activation technique and Ge(Li) gamma ray spectroscopy method. Since natural copper used as the target has two odd-mass stable isotopes of abundance,⁶³Cu(69.17%) and⁶⁵Cu(30.83%), their activation in some cases, gives the same residual nucleus through different reaction channels but with very different threshold energies. In such cases, the individual reaction cross sections are separated with the ratio of theoretical cross sections. The experimental results were compared with the predictions of preequilibrium hybrid model of Blann. A general agreement was found in all reactions using initial exciton numbern ₀=4(4p0h) and also preequilibrium fraction depends on the incident particle energy.