A study of the distribution of partial radiative widths and amplitudes for 149Sm(n, γ) 150Sm

A new approach to the study of width distributions is developed. The approach makes use of level-level interference effects in (n,γ) reactions to produce a set of radiative width amplitudes. This set is compared to the width distribution and to the hypothesis of Porter and Thomas for the case of ¹⁴⁹Sm(n, γ)¹⁵⁰Sm. Both width and amplitude distributions show small but significant deviations from the hypothesis for transitions to low-lying 3⁺ and 4⁺ states in ¹⁵⁰Sm. No significant width correlations are observed, nor is there apparent any violation of the assumption of random phases for the amplitudes.