Analysis of the excitation function of alpha-particle-induced reactions on natural silver

Abstract

Excitation functions of the reactions 107Ag[(α, n); (α, 2n); (α, αn); (α, α2n)] and,109Ag[(α, 2n); (α, 3n); (α, 4n); (α, α3n); (α, α4n)] were investigated up to 70 MeV by the stacked foil activation technique and Ge(Li) gamma-ray spectroscopy method. Since the natural silver used as the target has two odd mass stable isotopes of abundance 51.83% (107Ag) and 48.17% (109Ag), their activation in some cases gives the same residual nucleus through different reaction channels, but with very different Q values. In such cases, the individual reaction cross sections are separated with the help of the ratio of theoretical cross sections. The experimental cross sections were compared with the predictions of a pre-equilibrium hybrid model. The (α, xn) reactions are fairly well reproduced with initial exciton number n0 = 4(4p0h), whereas (α, αxn) reactions are underestimated in magnitude by a factor of five to six.