Stochastic Nuclear Reaction Theory: Breit-Wigner nuclear noise

The purpose of this paper is the application of various statistical tests for the detection of the intermediate structure, which lies immersed in the Breit-Wigner ''noise'' arising from the superposition of many compound nucleus resonances. To this end, neutron capture cross sections are constructed by Monte-Carlo simulations of the compound nucleus, hence providing the ''noise'' component. In a second step intermediate structure is added to the Breit-Wigner noise. The performance of the statistical tests in detecting the intermediate structure is evaluated using mocked-up neutron cross sections as the statistical samples. Afterwards, the statistical tests are applied to actual nuclear cross section data. 10 refs., 1 fig., 2 tabs