Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) with totally depleted transmission type Si surface barrier detector in reverse mount has been investigated to identify fission fragments in the presence of elastic background in heavy ion-induced fission reactions by both numerical simulation and experimental studies. The PSD method is compared with the other conventional methods adopted to identify fission fragments with solid-state detectors such as ΔE–E telescope and single thin ΔE detector and the data for the¹⁰B +²³²Th fission reaction are presented. Results demonstrate the usefulness of a single transmission-type surface barrier detector for the identification of fission fragments and projectiles like heavy ions

The ²³²Th$(n, \gamma)$ reaction cross-section at average neutron energies of 13.5, 15.5 and 17.28 MeV from the ⁷Li$(p, n)$ reaction has been determined for the first time using activation and off-line 𝛾-ray spectrometric technique. The ²³²Th$(n, 2n)$ cross-section at 17.28 MeV neutron energy has also been determined using the same technique. The experimentally determined ²³²Th$(n, \gamma)$ and ²³²Th$(n, 2n)$ reaction cross-sections from the present work were compared with the evaluated data of ENDF/BVII and JENDL-4.0 and were found to be in good agreement. The present data, along with literature data in a wide range of neutron energies, were interpreted in terms of competition between ²³²Th$(n, \gamma)$, $(n, f)$, $(n, nf)$ and $(n, xn)$ reaction channels. The ²³²Th$(n, \gamma)$ and ²³²Th$(n, 2n)$ reaction cross-sections were also calculated theoretically using the TALYS 1.2 computer code and were found to be in good agreement with the experimental data from the present work but were slightly higher than the literature data at lower neutron energies.

With an aim to understand the effects of breakup and transfer channels on elastic scattering and fusion cross-sections in the $^{7}{\text{Li}} + ^{27}{\text{Al}}$ reaction, simultaneous measurement of elastic scattering angular distributions and fusion cross-sections have been carried out at various energies ($E_{\text{lab}} = 8.0–16.0$ MeV) around the Coulomb barrier. Optical model (OM) analysis of the elastic scattering data does not show any threshold anomaly or breakup threshold anomaly behaviour in the energy dependence of the real and imaginary parts of the OM potential. Fusion cross-section at each bombarding energy is extracted from the measured $\alpha$-particle evaporation energy spectra at backward angles by comparing with the statistical model prediction. Results on fusion cross-sections from the present measurements along with data from the literature have been compared with the coupled-channels predictions. Detailed coupled-channels calculations have been carried out to study the effect of coupling of breakup, inelastic and transfer, channels on elastic scattering and fusion. The effect of $1n$-stripping transfer coupling was found to be significant compared to that of the projectile breakup couplings in the present system.

Heavy ion reaction studies around Coulomb barrier energies have been generally used to investigate the effect of the structure of projectile/target on reaction dynamics. Other than providing an understanding of basic physics of the reaction dynamics, some of these reactions have been used as tools to serve as surrogates of neutron-induced compound nuclear fission cross-sections involving unstable targets. In this paper, we report some of the recent results on the determination of neutron-induced fission cross-sections of unstable actinides present in Th–U and U–Pu fuel cycles by surrogate reaction method by employing transfer-induced fission studies with ${}^{6,7}$Li beams.

The distribution of fragment masses formed in nuclear fission is one of the most striking features of the process. Such measurements are very important to understand the shape evolution of the nucleus from ground state to scission through intermediate saddle points. The fission fragment mass distributions, generally obtained via conventional methods (i.e., by measuring the energy and/or the velocity of the correlated fission fragments) are limited to a mass resolution of 4–5 units. On the other hand, by employing the 𝛾-ray spectroscopy, it is possible to estimate the yield of individual fission fragments. In this work, determination of the fission fragment mass distribution by employing prompt 𝛾-ray spectroscopy is described along with the recent results on ²³⁸U(¹⁸O, f) and ²³⁸U(³²S, f) systems.