Excitation Functions of Products from 208,207,206,natPb and 209Bi (p,x) Reactions Measured in the 40-2600 MeV Energy Range and Predicted Theoretically

More than 5500 independent and cumulative yields of radioactive residual product nuclides with lifetimes ranging from 13.2 min (187Re) to 31.55 years (207Bi) are measured in 208,207,206,natPb and 209Bi thin targets irradiated by 0.0,0.0,0.1,0.1,0.2,0.4,0.6,0.80, 1.20, 1.60, and 2.60 GeV external proton beams from the ITEP U10 accelerator. The measured yields are compared with results by the LAHET (Bertini and ISABEL options), CEM03, LAQGSM03, INCL4+ABLA, CASCADE, CASCADE-2004, CASCADO, and the LAHETO codes, in order to evaluate their predictive powers in this energy region. We found that the predictive power of the tested codes is different but is satisfactory for most of the nuclides in the spallation region, though none of the codes agree well with the data in the whole mass region of product nuclides and all should be improved further. On the whole, the predictive power of all codes for the data in the fission and fragmentation product regions and, especially, at the borders between spallation and fission and between fission and fragmentation regions is much worse than in the spallation region; therefore, development of better evaporation/fission/fragmentation models is of high priority.