A study of measured neutron elastic differential neutron cross sections for [sup.23]Na

Elastic neutron scattering angular distributions from [sup.23]Na have been measured for incident neutron energies between 1.0 and 4.0 MeV at the University of Kentucky Accelerator Laboratory using neutron time-of-flight techniques for the scattered neutrons. This is an energy region in which existing data are very sparse. Measurements are compared with the predictions of the light particle-induced reaction code TALYS. The calculations reproduce forward angle scattering but have difficulty with relative minima in the differential cross section and large-angle scattering. Keywords Neutron cross section * Time of flight * TALYS