Evaluation of Reliable Cross Sections of Photoneutron Reactions on 103Rh and 165Ho Nuclei

With the aim of studying the reasons for the discrepancies between the cross sections determined for total and partial photoneutron reactions from various experiments in beams of quasimonoenergetic annihilation photons, data on such cross sections are analyzed for 103Rh and 165Ho target nuclei. Objective physical criteria of data reliability are used in this analysis. It is shown that significant systematic uncertainties the methods of photoneutron multiplicity sorting that were used in those experiments result in the unreliability of experimental data on the cross sections of (γ, 1n), (γ, 2n), and (γ, 3n) partial reactions over wide regions of photon energies. New cross sections of photoneutron reactions on 103Rh and 165Ho nuclei and data reliability criteria are obtained by employing the experimental—theoretical method developed earlier for evaluating partial reaction cross sections. The evaluated photoneutron reaction cross sections are compared with experimental data.