Measurements of the neutron cross sections of hydrogen and deuterium in H2O-D2O mixtures using the deep inelastic neutron-scattering technique.

We investigated the neutron cross sections of hydrogen and deuterium by means of the deep inelastic neutron-scattering technique in H2O-D2O mixtures. The interest in this work was to examine the anomalous behavior in the hydrogen neutron cross section reported in the past in similar experiments that raised a yet unsettled controversy. The measurements were made at the Bariloche pulsed neutron source (Argentina) in pure H2O and D2O, with mixtures of molar concentrations of deuterium of xD=0.3 and 0.4, at room temperature, under the same experimental conditions as the former experiments. The results are in good agreement with the standard cross sections and are incompatible with the anomalies pointed out.