Production of fast neutrons from deuteron beams in view of producing radioactive heavy ions beams

This thesis is part of two research and development programmes for the study of neutron rich radioactive nuclear beam production. The technique is based on the ISOL method and can be summarized as follows. Fast neutrons are generated by the break-up of deuterons in a thick target. These neutrons irradiate a fissionable 238U target. The resulting fission products are extracted from the target, ionised, mass selected and post-accelerated. The aim of the thesis is to study the neutron angular and energetic distributions. After a bibliographical research to justify the choice of deuterons as the best projectile, we developed more specifically three points: - the extension of the activation detector method for neutron spectroscopy to a wide energy range (1 to 150 MeV), - the experimental measurement of neutron angular and energetic distributions produced by deuterons on thick targets. The deuteron energy ranges from 17 to 200 MeV and the thick targets were Be, C and U, - the realization of a code based on Serber's theory to predict the neutron distribution for any couple (deuteron energy-thick target). We conclude that for our application the most suitable target is C and the best deuteron energy is about 100 MeV. (author)