Optical-Model Analysis of the Energy Dependence of Neutron Polarization near 1 MeV

Abstract

An optical-model analysis is made of the energy dependence of the polarization of neutrons elastically scattered from a number of medium-weight nuclei near 1 MeV. Attention is also paid to the energy variation of the total and reaction cross sections, so that the optical parameters chosen represent the average scattering over a range of nuclei and a range of energies in a meaningful fashion. Some angular distributions at 1 MeV are also plotted. The effect of compound-elastic scattering on these angular distributions and on the polarization near 1 MeV is found from a Hauser-Feshbach calculation.