A radiochemical study on the existence of dineutron

A radiochemical study has been made to search for dineutron² n produced in the simultaneous two-neutron emission of the excited⁶He nuclei,⁶He^*, induced in the reaction of⁹Be+n→-⁶He^*+α with fast neutrons in a reactor. It was attempted to detect the radio-activity of²⁸Mg as a product of the reaction² n+²⁷Al→²⁸Mg+p. The²⁸Mg radioactivity observed in heterogeneous samples composed of the² n-producing target Be and the² n-detecting target Al separately was not found to be more than that of a side reaction,²⁷Al{(n, p)(n _th, γ)+(n _th, γ)(n, p)}²⁸Mg, whereas it clearly exceeded that of the side reaction in alloy samples made of Be and Al metals. The former experiment gives an upper limit of the production rate of the dineutron in the bound state 1×10^?7 per event of the simultaneous two-neutron emission. A tentative explanation for the excessive²⁸Mg radioactivity observed in the latter experiment is the following two-step process,⁹Be+n→⁶He+α and²⁷Al+⁶He→+²⁸Mg+α+p, rather than the process induced by the dineutron in a virtual state.