Neodymium is a 235U fission product and is important for reactor neutronic calculations. The aim of the present work is to improve upon the existing neutron cross-section data of neodymium.

Neutron capture and transmission measurements were performed by the time-of-flight technique at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) linear accelerator (LINAC) laboratory using metallic neodymium samples. The capture measurements were made at the 25-m flight station with a 16-segment NaI multiplicity detector, and the transmission measurements were performed at 15- and 25-m flight stations, respectively, with 6Li glass scintillation detectors. After the data were collected and reduced, resonance parameters were determined by combined fitting of the transmission and capture data with the SAMMY multilevel R-matrix Bayesian code.

The resonance parameters for all naturally occurring neodymium isotopes were deduced within the energy range of 1 to 500 eV. The resulting resonance parameters were used to calculate the capture resonance integrals from this energy. The RPI parameters gave a resonance integral value of 32 ± 1 b that is ~7% lower than that obtained with the ENDF/B-VI parameters. The current measurements significantly reduce the uncertainties of the resonance parameters when compared with previously published parameters.