Experimental studies toward better understanding of beta-delayed neutron emission

Beta-delayed neutron emission process is a dominant decay mode for the majority of neutron-rich nuclei. The neutron-emission part of the process is typically modeled using Hauser-Feshbach formalism under the assumption of the compound nucleus stage. This however requires the presence of a mechanism to transition from configurations populated during beta-decay which, in case prevalent allowed Gamow-Teller type transformation, results in a restricted set of configurations. Detailed measurements of neutron emission probabilities to excited nuclear states can be used as a probe to investigate the validity of the compound-nucleus stage. Experiments were performed on a range of nuclei from nitrogen to iodine to probe the nature of neutron emission after beta decay revealing in some cases non-statistical behavior. A simple model was constructed to link this behavior to the details nuclear structure of involved nuclei,