Towards More Predictive Nuclear
Reaction Modelling
S. Hilaire and S. Goriely
1 Introduction
Nuclear reaction models, beyond the fundamental quest for understanding processes
taking place when a nuclear reaction occurs, are necessary to produce nuclear
data for various applications. Depending on the targeted goal, the accuracy of the
predictions as well as the type of data predicted might be very different. For nuclear
reactors, for instance, the accuracy is clearly a key issue for specific nuclei and
specific types of data. At the other extreme, one finds nuclear astrophysics for which
the accuracy is less crucial than the ability of the model to produce data for all
possible interacting systems. Even for the most important nuclei, for which many
measurements have been performed, the need for better nuclear reaction models
is still relevant since one still have to deal with processes for which data are not
available or not precise enough. Within this context, nuclear reaction models have
to be as robust and predictive as possible. This is why during the last 40 years at
least, many nuclear reaction codes have been developed and used to answer the
question: “what happens when a projectile hits a target nucleus?”
It is clear that the answer to this question depends on the nature of the projectile,
on the target and on the projectile energy. In what follows, we restrict ourselves to
the case where light projectiles (gamma, neutron, protons . . . up to 4 He) interact
with a target nucleus heavy enough (typically with a mass A > 10) with an incident
energy between 1 keV and 200 MeV, a framework enabling the implementations
of the so-called statistical models. Within this framework, several models come
S. Hilaire ()
CEA, DAM, DIF, Arpajon, France
e-mail: stephane.hilaire@cea.fr
S. Goriely
Institut d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection
in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2021
J. Escher et al. (eds.), Compound-Nuclear Reactions, Springer Proceedings in
Physics 254, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58082-7_1
3
Reaction Modelling
S. Hilaire and S. Goriely
1 Introduction
Nuclear reaction models, beyond the fundamental quest for understanding processes
taking place when a nuclear reaction occurs, are necessary to produce nuclear
data for various applications. Depending on the targeted goal, the accuracy of the
predictions as well as the type of data predicted might be very different. For nuclear
reactors, for instance, the accuracy is clearly a key issue for specific nuclei and
specific types of data. At the other extreme, one finds nuclear astrophysics for which
the accuracy is less crucial than the ability of the model to produce data for all
possible interacting systems. Even for the most important nuclei, for which many
measurements have been performed, the need for better nuclear reaction models
is still relevant since one still have to deal with processes for which data are not
available or not precise enough. Within this context, nuclear reaction models have
to be as robust and predictive as possible. This is why during the last 40 years at
least, many nuclear reaction codes have been developed and used to answer the
question: “what happens when a projectile hits a target nucleus?”
It is clear that the answer to this question depends on the nature of the projectile,
on the target and on the projectile energy. In what follows, we restrict ourselves to
the case where light projectiles (gamma, neutron, protons . . . up to 4 He) interact
with a target nucleus heavy enough (typically with a mass A > 10) with an incident
energy between 1 keV and 200 MeV, a framework enabling the implementations
of the so-called statistical models. Within this framework, several models come
S. Hilaire ()
CEA, DAM, DIF, Arpajon, France
e-mail: stephane.hilaire@cea.fr
S. Goriely
Institut d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection
in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2021
J. Escher et al. (eds.), Compound-Nuclear Reactions, Springer Proceedings in
Physics 254, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58082-7_1
3