Photonuclear reactions with Zinc: A case for clinical linacs

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using clinical linear accelerators to induce photonuclear reactions in zinc isotopes, achieving accurate transition energy measurements and confirming the potential of medical linacs for nuclear physics research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of clinical linacs for photonuclear experiments, providing a new approach for nuclear physics studies using medical equipment.

Findings

Transition energies match literature data with high accuracy.

Half-lives agree with literature but with less precision.

Clinical linacs can effectively induce photonuclear reactions.

Abstract

The use of bremsstrahlung photons produced by a linac to induce photonuclear reactions is wide spread. However, using a clinical linac to produce the photons is a new concept. We aimed to induce photonuclear reactions on zinc isotopes and measure the subsequent transition energies and half-lives. For this purpose, a bremsstrahlung photon beam of 18 MeV endpoint energy produced by the Philips SLI-25 linac has been used. The subsequent decay has been measured with a well-shielded single HPGe detector. The results obtained for transition energies are in good agreement with the literature data and in many cases surpass these in accuracy. For the half-lives, we are in agreement with the literature data, but do not achieve their precision. The obtained accuracy for the transition energies show what is achievable in an experiment such as ours. We demonstrate the usefulness and benefits of employing clinical linacs for nuclear physics experiments.