Investigation of GeV proton-induced spallation reactions

A reliable and precise modeling of GeV proton-induced spallation reactions is indispensable for the design of the spallation module and the target station of future accelerator driven hybrid reactors (ADS) or spallation neutron sources (ESS), in particular, to provide precise predictions for the neutron production, the radiation damage of materials (window), and the production of radioactivity (3 H, 7 Be etc.) in the target medium. Detailed experimental nuclear data are needed for sensitive validations and improvements of the models, whose predictive power is strongly dependent on the correct physical description of the three main stages of a spallation reaction: (i) the Intra-Nuclear-Cascade (INC) with the fast heating of the target nucleus, (ii) the de-excitation due to pre-equilibrium emission including the possibility of multi-fragmentation, and (iii) the statistical decay of thermally excited nuclei by evaporation of light particles and fission in the case of heavy nuclei. Key experimental data for this endeavour are absolute production cross sections and energy spectra for neutrons and light charged-particles (LCPs), emission of composite particles prior and post to the attainment of an equilibrated system, distribution of excitation energies deposited in the nuclei after the INC, and fission probabilities. The correlations of these quantities are particularly important to detect and identify possible deficiencies of the theoretical modeling of the various stages of a spallation reaction. Systematic measurements of such data are furthermore needed over large ranges of target nuclei and incident proton energies. Such data has been measured with the NESSI detector. An overview of new and previous results will be given. (authors)