Neutron Production from the Deuteron Breakup Reaction on Deuterium

Neutron production from the D(d,np) reaction is investigated for projectile energies between 5.34 and 13.29 MeV, and for emission angles of up to 15 deg. The breakup spectral angular cross section is deduced from neutron time-of-flight measurements normalized to the well-established D(d,n)³He angular cross section. The energy-integrated neutron yield from breakup reactions strongly increases with the projectile energy, and it exceeds the yield of monoenergetic neutrons at projectile energies of ≈9 MeV for neutron emission in a forward direction. The angular distributions behave very similarly for both reactions up to laboratory angles of 10 deg. In addition, it is possible to describe the breakup spectra for emission angles up to 10 deg with only one distribution unique to each energy when normalizing the spectra to the maximum energy of the breakup neutrons.