Fluctuations in Partial Radiation Widths

Abstract

One of the main efforts of slow-neutron spectroscopy has been to measure and interpret the distribution of partial widths for elastic scattering, radiative capture, and fission in neutron resonances. The ability to measure the partial widths for individual radiative transitions has resulted from improvement in experimental techniques. An experiment is described in which an attempt was made to observe the high energy end of resonant-capture gamma spectra of W/sup 183/, Pt/sup 195/, and Hg/sup 199/ in enough detail to be able to determine the probabilities of transitions not only to the ground state but also to one or more of the low-energy states of the compound nucleus. (W.D.M.)