Study on deuteron formation mechanism in nucleon-induced reactions

The mechanism of deuteron formation in neutron-induced reactions is studied within the framework of the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics model, using the GEMINI code. The influence of the $$\hbox {n}\,+\,\hbox {p}\,\rightarrow \,\hbox {d}$$ reaction channel is investigated by analyzing the deuteron production cross sections in the neutron-induced reactions $$^{12}$$ C(n,d), $$^{16}$$ O(n,d), and $$^{28}$$ Si(n,d), with incident energies of 20–100 MeV. By including the $$\hbox {n}\,+\,\hbox {p}\,\rightarrow \,\hbox {d}$$ reaction channel when modeling the collision, the deuteron production cross sections increase, optimizing the cross-section results and bringing them closer to the experimental data values. This indicates that the $$\hbox {n}\,+\,\hbox {p}\,\rightarrow \,\hbox {d}$$ reaction channel is an important mechanism for enhancing deuteron production.