Monte Carlo Calculations of High-Energy Nuclear Interactions. I. Systematics of Nuclear Evaporation

Abstract

The process of nuclear de-excitation by evaporation has been calculated by using a Monte Carlo method and fast electronic computers. The competition between the emission of neutrons, protons, deuterons, tritons, ${\mathrm{He}}^{3}$, and ${\mathrm{He}}^{4}$ has been studied as a function of various parameters and experimental conditions. A systematic survey is presented for a range of atomic numbers, mass numbers and excitation energy of initial nuclei. The nuclides studied extend from $A=49$ to $A=239$ with $Z={Z}_{A}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}3$. The range of excitation energies for which computations are presented extends from 100-700 Mev. Among the parameters affecting the process the importance of the temperature correction of the Coulomb barrier and the level density parameters are considered in detail. The average properties of the process such as average numbers of the various particles emitted, the average number of nucleons, of charged particles, and of charges emitted are summarized in graphical and tabular form for various combinations of the parameters used in the computation. Energy spectra of the various emitted particles are also shown.