Measurement of absolute gamma-ray emission probabilities from decay of 138Xe

The fission gaseous Xe-138 products play an important role in the research of nuclear-reaction products and radioisotope applications. Therefore, precise data for emission probabilities of gamma-ray from decay of Xe-138 are highly desired. However, a high precision is not achievable with a sufficient accuracy due to the limitations of the usual experimental techniques. In this paper, after the homogeneous sources of Xe-138-Cs-138 were prepared, the activity of Xe-138 was obtained by the decay relationship between Xe-138 and Cs-138 using a HPGe detector. The full-energy peak efficiencies of gamma-ray for Xe-138 and Cs-138 were accurately calibrated using many activity standard sources and self-absorption was corrected. As a result, the absolute emission probabilities of the 258.4, 434.6 and 1768.3 key gamma-ray from decay of Xe-138 were determined to be 34.9(10)%, 22.2(6)% and 18.8(5)%, respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.