Neutron cross sections of cryogenic materials: a synthetic kernel for molecular solids

A new synthetic scattering function aimed at the description of the interaction of thermal neutrons with molecular solids has been developed. At low incident neutron energies, both lattice modes and molecular rotations are specifically accounted for, through an expansion of the scattering law in few phonon terms. Simple representations of the molecular dynamical modes are used, in order to produce a fairly accurate description of neutron scattering kernels and cross sections with a minimum set of input data. As the neutron energies become much larger than that corresponding to the characteristic Debye temperature and to the rotational energies of the molecular solid, the 'phonon formulation' transforms into the traditional description for molecular gases. (orig.)