An Investigation of Some (t, d) Reactions in Light Nuclei at 5.5 MeV

A broad range magnetic spectrograph has been used to analyse the deuterons emitted from targets of natural boron, carbon, silicon dioxide and aluminium bombarded with 5.5 MeV tritons. The angular distributions of the majority of the deuteron groups from the reactions observed in ¹⁰B, ¹²C, ¹³C, ¹⁶O, ²⁷Al and ²⁸Si have been measured and information has also been obtained on (t, d) reactions in ²⁴Mg, ²⁸Si, and ⁴⁰Ca because of the presence of these nuclei as impurities in the targets. In all cases the measured excitation energies of the final nuclei are in good agreement with the accepted values. The angular distributions have been compared with the stripping theory and also with published data on (d, p) transitions between the same initial and final nuclear states. Where possible the ratios of the yields of corresponding (t, d) and (d, p) reactions have been compared with the predictions of stripping theory to extract values of the proportionality constant of the momentum transform of the deuteron within the triton,|A₀|² N₁². The values obtained vary between 18.0 × 10¹² cm^-1 for the transition from ¹⁰B to the ground state of ¹¹B and 1.3 × 10¹² cm^-1 for the transitions from ¹⁶O to the ground state of ¹⁷O and from ²⁸Si to the 3.630 MeV excited state of ²⁹Si.

At 5.5 MeV triton bombarding energy, therefore, a constant value of|A₀|² N₁² cannot be used to extract values of nucleon reduced widths from studies of (t, d) reactions.