Neutron-induced fission cross sections of short-lived actinides with the surrogate reaction method

We present a review of the fission cross section measurements made by the CENBG collaboration over the last years using the surrogate reaction method. For example the neutron-induced fission cross sections of 233Pa (T1/2=27 d), 242Cm (T1/2=162.8 d) and 243Cm (T1/2=29.1 y) have been obtained by our group with this technique. The advantages and the difficulties of the surrogate method are discussed. Special attention is paid to the comparison between cross sections measured with the surrogate method and those obtained directly with neutrons at low energies. This comparison provides information on possible differences between the spin-parity distributions achieved in the two methods. We measured for the first time the fission cross section of 233Pa. Our results for 231Pa(n,f) revealed that the existing neutron-induced data overestimated the fission cross section above 1.5 MeV. The deduced 241Am(n,f) and 242Cm(n,f) cross sections agree with the available data obtained via neutron-induced reactions. The good agreement observed at the lowest neutron energies between the present results and the neutron-induced data for 242Cm(n,f) and 243Cm(n,f) indicates that the population of excited states generated by the transfer reactions used in this work is similar to the distribution fed in neutron induced reactions. This agreement illustrates the potential of the surrogate reaction method to provide neutron-induced fission cross sections for short-lived nuclei