Photon energy dependence of photoneutron production from heavy targets

The double differential cross-sections (DDXs) of photoneutron production via the photonuclear reaction on tantalum, tungsten, and bismuth for 13 and 17 MeV linearly polarized photon beams were measured using the time-of-flight method at the NewSUBARU-BL01 facility. Polarized photons were obtained by the Laser Compton backscattering (LCS) technique. Two distinct components were observed on the spectra: the low-energy component up to 4 MeV and the high-energy above 4 MeV. The angular distribution of the low-energy component was isotropic, whereas the high-energy was distributed anisotropically and influenced by the angle between direction of photon polarization and neutron emission, especially for 17 MeV photon energy. These phenomena were similar to those of Au-197 target observed in the previous studies. The low-energy neutron distributions at 13 and 17 MeV photon energies were almost identical for all three targets. The DDX energy integration was calculated and compared among the three targets for two-photon energies. Given the horizontal polarization (plane parallel to the x-axis) of the incident photons, the emission angles of 90 degrees on the x-axis and y-axis recorded the maximum and minimum photoneutron yield, respectively. The differences between these two positions were minor for Ta-181 and W-nat at 13 MeV photon energy and noticeable for other cases. An underestimation of the TENDL nuclear data library was observed on the photoneutron DDXs compared to the experimental results for Ta-181 and Bi-209.