A study of measured neutron elastic differential neutron cross sections for 23Na

Elastic neutron scattering angular distributions from 23 Na have been measured for incident neutron ener- gies between 1.0 and 4.0 MeV at the University of Ken- tucky Accelerator Laboratory using neutron time-of-flight techniques for the scattered neutrons. This is an energy region in which existing data are very sparse. Measure- ments are compared with the predictions of the light par- ticle-induced reaction code TALYS. The calculations reproduce forward angle scattering but have difficulty with relative minima in the differential cross section and large- angle scattering.