Photodissociation of p-process nuclei studied by bremsstrahlung-induced activation

Abstract.A research program has been started to study experimentally the near-threshold photodissociation of nuclides in the chain of cosmic heavy-element production with bremsstrahlung from the ELBE accelerator. An important prerequisite for such studies is the good knowledge of the bremsstrahlung distribution which was determined by measuring the photodissociation of the deuteron and by comparison with model calculations. First data were obtained for the astrophysically important target nucleus 92Mo by observing the radioactive decay of the nuclides produced by bremsstrahlung irradiation at end-point energies between 11.8MeV and 14.0MeV. The results are compared to recent statistical model calculations.