Scattering of Slow Neutrons from Propane Gas

Measurements of the partial differential neutron scattering cross sections for room-temperature propane gas are reported. These measurements were made at incident energies of 0.0101, 0.0254, 0.0736, and 0.102 ev at seven scattering angles between 16.3° and 84.7° using the Materials Testing Reactor phased chopper velocity selector. The data are converted to the scattering-law presentation and compared with three theoretical calculations: (a) The ideal gas, using an effective mass obtained from an average of the mass tensors for the three types of H atoms in propane, gives poor agreement. (b) The Krieger-Nelkin approximation, which includes the effect of zero-point vibrations, gives limited agreement for energy transfer less than $0.5k_{B}T$ at intermediate momentum transfers. At large momentum transfers where vibrational effects become important it underestimates the cross section. (c) A modification of the Krieger-Nelkin theory that includes the effects of single-quantum transitions from the three lowest vibrational states gives better agreement. The discrepancies still present at large momentum and energy transfers are attributed to an uncertainty in the methyl-group barrier height for the three lowest energy modes, to the harmonic oscillator approximation for these modes, and to the approximate molecular orientation averaging used in the calculation.