Open Access

Carlos Guerrero Sánchez, Jorge Lerendegui-Marco, César Domingo-Pardo, Adrià Casanovas Hoste, Rugard Dressler, Shlomi Halfon, Stephan Heinitz, Nikolay Kivel, Ulrich Köster, Michael Paul, José Manuel Quesada Molina, Dorothea Schumann, Ariel Tarifeño-Saldivia, Moshe Tessler, Leo Weissman, Oliver Aberle, Józef Andrzejewski, Laurent Audouin, Michael Bacak, Javier Balibrea Correa, Massimo Barbagallo, František Bečvář, Eric Berthoumieux, Jonathan Billowes, Damir Bosnar, Adam Brown, Manuel Caamaño, Francisco Calviño Tavares, Marco Calviani, Daniel Cano-Ott, Roberto Cardella, Francesco Cerutti, Yonghao Chen, Enrico Chiaveri, Nicola Colonna, Guillem Pere Cortés Rossell, Miguel Antonio Cortés-Giraldo, Luigi Cosentino, Lucia Anna Damone, Maria Diakaki, Emmeric Dupont, Ignacio Durán, Beatriz Fernández Domínguez, Alfredo Ferrari, Pedro G. Ferreira, Paolo Finocchiaro, Kathrin Göbel, Aczel Regino García Ríos, Aleksandra Gawlik, Simone Gilardoni, Tudor Glodariu, Isabel Maria Ferro Gonçalves, Enrique Miguel González Romero, Erich Griesmayer, Frank Gunsing, Hideo Harada, Jan Heyse, David Jenkins, Erwin Jericha, Franz Käppeler, Yacine Kadi, Antigoni Kalamara, Pavel Kavrigin, Atsushi Kimura, Nikolay Kivel, Michael Kokkoris, Milan Krtička, Cem Deniz Kurtulgil, Esther Leal Cidoncha, Claudia Lederer, Helmut Leeb, Sergio Lo Meo, Sarah Jane Lonsdale, Daniela Macina, Justyna Marganiec, Trinitario Martı́nez, Alessandro Masi, Cristian Massimi, Pierfrancesco Mastinu, Mario Mastromarco, Emilio Andrea Maugeri, Annamaria Mazzone, Emilio Mendoza Cembranos, Alberto Mengoni, Paolo Maria Milazzo, Federica Mingrone, Agatino Musumarra, Alexandru Negret, Ralf Nolte, Andreea Oprea, Nikolas Patronis, Andreas Pavlik, Jarosław Perkowski, José Ignacio Porras Sánchez, Javier Praena, Désirée Radeck, Thomas Rauscher, René Reifarth, Prakash Chandra Rout, Carlo Rubbia, James Ryan, Marta Sabaté-Gilarte, Alok Saxena, Peter Schillebeeckx, Alastair Gavin Smith, Nikolay V. Sosnin, Athanasios Stamatopoulos, Giuseppe Tagliente, José Luis Taı́n Enríquez, Laurent Tassan-Got, Andrea Tsinganis, Stanislav Valenta, Gianni Vannini, Vincenzo Variale, Pedro Vaz, Alberto Ventura, Vasilis Vlachoudis, Rosa Vlastou, Anton Wallner, Stephen J. Warren, Christina Weiß, Philip John Woods, Tobias Wright, Petar Žugec

• The neutron capture cross section of several key unstable isotopes acting as branching points in the s-process are crucial for stellar nucleosynthesis studies, but they are very challenging to measure due to the difficult production of sufficient sample material, the high activity of the resulting samples, and the actual (n,γ) measurement, for which high neutron fluxes and effective background rejection capabilities are required. As part of a new program to measure some of these important branching points, radioactive targets of 147Pm and 171Tm have been produced by irradiation of stable isotopes at the ILL high flux reactor. Neutron capture on 146Nd and 170Er at the reactor was followed by beta decay and the resulting matrix was purified via radiochemical separation at PSI. The radioactive targets have been used for time-of-flight measurements at the CERN n_TOF facility using the 19 and 185 m beam lines during 2014 and 2015. The capture cascades were detected using a set of four C6D6 scintillators, allowing to observe the associated neutron capture resonances. The results presented in this work are the first ever determination of the resonance capture cross section of 147Pm and 171Tm. Activation experiments on the same 147Pm and 171Tm targets with a high-intensity 30 keV quasi-Maxwellian flux of neutrons will be performed using the SARAF accelerator and the Liquid-Lithium Target (LiLiT) in order to extract the corresponding Maxwellian Average Cross Section (MACS). The status of these experiments and preliminary results will be presented and discussed as well.