Determination of the energy levels of gallium's product nuclei and the concentration of tin in tin-containing samples by photonuclear reactions

It is possible to excite atomic nuclei electromagnetically and even separate proton or neutron from a sample which is exposed to gamma rays by a clinical linac. Although there are available different techniques of measurement for the photo-nuclear reaction products, this is the most widely used one. Thus, the determination of the elemental concentration of a sample by photo-activation analysis method is a reasonable attempt since it is related to the detailed spectral analysis of the photonuclear reactions of an intended element. For this reason, in this study in order to get the proof of principle for photo-activation a pure tin sample is irradiated with high energy bremsstrahlung photons at the end-point energy of 18 MeV. Thus, the tin concentration in tin-containing samples determined by a precise measurement with a high purity germanium detector. In this study, we have also run an experiment to determine the energy levels of Gallium nucleus. As a result of 71Ga(gamma,n)70Ga and 69Ga(gamma,n)68Ga reactions, the energy levels of 70Ga and 68Ga isotopes have been determined. The results are in good agreement with the literature values.