Measurement of Neutron Capture Cross Section of 62Ni in the keV-Region

The neutron capture cross section of 62Ni, relative to gold as a standard, was determined in the energy range from 250 eV to 100 keV. This energy range covers the region between 5 keV to 20 keV, which is not available in ENDF. Capture events are detected with the 160‐fold 4π BaF2 Detector for Advanced Neutron Capture Experiments (DANCE) at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. One of the challenges was to process the high count rate of 4 MHz, which required an optimization of the data acquisition software. The neutron energy was determined by the time‐of‐flight technique using a flight path of 20.25 m. The sample mass of the 96% enriched 62Ni target was 210 mg and it was mounted in a 1.5 μm thick Mylar foil.