Nuclear Reactions of Low-ZElements with 5.7-Bev Protons

This work describes the results of 5.7-Bev proton bombardments of the target elements Be, C, N, O, F, Na, and Al. Production cross sections were obtained for many radioactive products with half-lives between 1.2 minutes and 2.6 years. The ($p, \mathrm{pn}$) cross sections for the targets C, N, O, F, and Na were found to be 29±3 mb, 7.3±0.7 mb, 33±5 mb, 19±2 mb, and 31±5 mb, respectively. Much of the variation in these values is thought to be due to the difference in the number of neutrons available for ($p, \mathrm{pn}$) reactions in the different target nuclei. The cross sections for other types of reactions studied do not change as much over the above range of target elements as do the ($p, \mathrm{pn}$) cross sections. Comparison of the cross sections measured in this work with those obtained at 0.98 to 3 Bev shows that in the 1- to 5.7-Bev energy range the excitation functions are nearly constant.